The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| School on a bus brings classes to Indian slums Posted: 07 Nov 2011 04:21 AM PST  Children write letters from the Telugu alphabet as a teacher conducts lessons inside a bus converted into a school called "School on Wheels", at a slum area in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on November 1, 2011.― Reuters pic It's a school on wheels that brings education to the doorstep of disadvantaged children such as these every day, halting for several hours at a time in different parts of the sprawling city. The children, whose parents are day laborers on construction sites, or work as rag pickers and maids, either never go to school or drop out once enrolled. Many have to work as hard as their parents to pay off family debts. "These children have no time to go to school, unless the school comes to them," said T.L. Reddy, founder of the CLAP Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that runs the mobile school. "At first we prepared a temporary tent in their slum to give basic education for the children. Then slowly we developed the concept of a school inside a vehicle to attract more." Reddy, a teacher for 25 years, first thought of doing something for the children when they caught his attention a decade ago. After gathering donations and setting up the tent first, they began operating the bus three years ago. The inside of the bus is bright and clean, its walls festooned with the alphabet, numbers and pictures of fruit and animals. Children perch on seats around the inside of the bus, writing on slates they hold on their laps. Some days, the bus is so full that children sit cross-legged on the floor as a sari-clad teacher talks to them. "The teaching is good in this bus and nobody beats us," said 10-year-old Devi, who enrolled in the first grade of primary school three years ago but soon dropped out. She attends school in between helping her father collect rags, and hopes to be a teacher. Manjula, another 10-year-old girl, bubbles with excitement about her studies and wants to be a doctor to bring medical care to slum children such as herself. "Now I can read and write from 1 to 200 numbers," she said. The goal, Reddy said, is to teach the children enough for them to be mainstreamed into government schools. So far, some 40 children have done so despite the considerable odds. "The greatest hurdles are things ranging from the erratic schedule of the students, and the varied mindset of their families," he added. But the school's greatest achievement may be something far more simple. "This is the only chance they get to be kids, even if it is for only two hours," Reddy said. ― Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Dual flu infections in Cambodia raise concern Posted: 07 Nov 2011 12:51 AM PST  Syringes and flu vaccines are on a table. ― AFP pic The unusual diagnoses were made in a 23-year-old teacher and one of his young male students, who had H1N1 and a human season flu H3N2 at the same time, said the findings in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Neither patient was hospitalised and their illnesses did not appear any more severe than in typical patients who are afflicted with a single strain. The cases date back to 2009, the year the pandemic H1N1 flu emerged, and do not pose a current threat, but rather remind experts of the dangers that a strain such as H5N1 bird flu could mix with human flu and sicken millions. "Influenza viruses are continually changing," said study author Patrick Blair, director of respiratory diseases at the US Naval Health Research Centre in San Diego, California. "Finding a co-infection in an area where there is considerable seasonal flu, pandemic flu and H5N1 avian flu shows there is an opportunity for co-mingling in swine or human hosts that could create an ominous global health problem." In the Cambodian case, researchers analysed and sequenced both virus genomes and found there had been no "genetic recombination," or mingling of the two. Other case studies included in the report also show that such co-infections are rare. One study in 2010 of 2,000 samples turned up no cases of dual infections and another pointed to fewer than two dozen co-infections with H1N1 ― one in Singapore, six in China, and 11 in New Zealand. Infectious disease expert Peter Hotez, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, said the research provides more reason for world governments to "remain vigilant" and share information. "Highly infectious strains of the virus against which humans have little defense can spread from one continent to another with 24 hours," he said. The study noted that southeast Asia "has proven to be a critical region for the adaptation and emergence of variants of seasonal influenza viruses as well as an area of zoonotic virus transmission in humans." Since 2005, the World Health Organisation has counted 566 human infections with H5N1 avian flu and 332 deaths, most of them in the Near East and southeast Asia. In Cambodia, where vaccination against the flu is rare, 16 of the 18 people infected with H5N1 flu have died, with the most recent fatal case in August. ― AFP-Relaxnews Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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