One more name has now been added to the brand ambassador list of children's charity UNICEF, New Zealand and the name is none other than Rugby legend Jonah Lomu.
Lomu is called the first true global superstar of rugby union and now, he has been appointed as brand ambassador of UNICEF, NZ. Some other popular names which are gems of the organization include Hayley Westenra, Mike McRoberts, Novak Djokovic and Fernando Alonso.
The 36-year-old is quite happy to have the position and he affirmed: "My kids mean the world to me and I'm doing everything I can to give them the best start in life, but there are so many children around the world who are disadvantaged from the time they are born".
He wanted to help children and holds the opinion that there could have been any other best way to support children. Lomu is on dialysis as his kidney transplantation operation failed. This position has given him needed strength to overcome illness as now; it is not only about him but it's about numerous needy children as well.
Quite ecstatic about being brand ambassador, Lomu is in hospital and is recovering from his illness as two weeks ago, his body refused to accept donated kidneys. But, this is not something which would act as hurdle to stop him from working for the charity.
He knows this battle would continue but there is something more important which requires his concentration and time. Earlier, he was not even able to go washroom but now when he knows he has added responsibilities on his shoulders, he has been making continuous efforts. This has led him to walk of his own and he could now also go to washroom of his own.
From giving free polio vaccines to Christmas gifts, Lomu is leaving no stone unturned to make his involvement larger than life in UNICEF.
2011年11月22日星期二
2011年11月16日星期三
Wired for gold
Unlicensed e-waste recyclers in Beijing and migrant workers in Guangdong province's Guiyu town extract gold, silver and other valuable metals from discarded electronic appliances, a business that operates illegally and has significant health risks - but also generates huge profits. Cheng Anqi and Erik Nilsson go undercover to find out more.
Huang Yan coughs as she deposits a large circuit board in a coal stove. Wisps of toxic smoke curl off the board as it softens, blisters then dribbles. Huang describes her health problems as she melts e-waste - discarded electronics like computers and mobile phones - with 12 other migrant workers in an illegal 20-square-meter family-run workshop in Guangdong province's Guiyu town. "Sometimes," the 32-year-old says, "I cough up blood." Huang tries to elaborate but instead wheezes and smiles mournfully.
She earns 30 yuan ($4.73) a day for nine hours spent extracting small but valuable amounts of gold, silver, copper and other substances from used circuit boards.
The woman believes her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and kidney stones are caused by the soot and poisons, including sulfur dioxide, that billow out while she fires circuit boards to melt the metals into extractable goop.
Black market e-waste processing is the economic pillar of Guiyu town in Shantou city. The industry employed more than 80 percent of residents three years ago.
But the global economic downturn has exerted gravity on copper prices since 2008, reducing e-waste recycling's profitability and, in turn, the pollution it expels.
However, people like Huang, who moved from Hunan province to Guiyu's Beilin village to find work 19 years ago, remain sick.
"I was told this was a place where jobs were available, and people without higher education could make money," says Huang, who is raising a family of four.
But her health deteriorated as her finances improved.
She started feeling intense back pains and stomachaches that turned out to be kidney stones.
The Yaohui Hospital in Shantou city warned her family against drinking the water when every member developed kidney stones.
The toxic byproducts of e-waste recycling are dumped into the town's waterways, poisoning the groundwater and wells, Shantou University Medical College cytological analysis professor Huo Xia says. Kidney stones are among the ailments they cause. Greenpeace East Asia reports about 30 percent of migrant workers in Guiyu had them in 2009.
Most residents are migrants lured by the e-waste processing opportunities, while many families with local hukou (residency permits) have made fortunes from e-waste and relocated outside because of the pollution. They employ the migrants to run their businesses in their absences.
Huang says her family buys drinking water from the neighboring areas for 2 or 3 yuan (31-47 US cents) per 3 liters.
"But we must use polluted water for washing vegetables and dishes," she says.
People like Huang say they don't want their children to go through what they have.
The 31-year-old Zheng Shouren, from Jiangxi province, has suffered from chronic bronchitis for two of the five years he has worked as a plastic cutter in an e-waste storehouse.
"I cough a lot every day, and there is a lot of phlegm," he yells, above the screech of a saw that throws up rooster tails of acrid smoke.
"Our boss only drives into town on weekends to check on the business and won't stay long."
Chen Demin quit working as a plastic cutter to escape the toxic haze two years ago to wash the cut fragments.
The 28-year-old extends cracked hands for examination. One peeling fingertip bleeds.
He washes the shards in a solution of lime powder or saltwater to separate different toxic yet valuable substances.
"It's too sad to even look at my hands and too painful to straighten them," Chen says.
"I often wear gloves packed with lotion to keep them from hurting. It's like a toothache in my fingers and palms."
Chen and other Guiyu workers are still laboring despite the drop in market prices for the precious metals they extract.
"The recession will pass," Chen says.
"And business will get better when the price picks up. It's just a matter of time."
Huang Yan coughs as she deposits a large circuit board in a coal stove. Wisps of toxic smoke curl off the board as it softens, blisters then dribbles. Huang describes her health problems as she melts e-waste - discarded electronics like computers and mobile phones - with 12 other migrant workers in an illegal 20-square-meter family-run workshop in Guangdong province's Guiyu town. "Sometimes," the 32-year-old says, "I cough up blood." Huang tries to elaborate but instead wheezes and smiles mournfully.
She earns 30 yuan ($4.73) a day for nine hours spent extracting small but valuable amounts of gold, silver, copper and other substances from used circuit boards.
The woman believes her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and kidney stones are caused by the soot and poisons, including sulfur dioxide, that billow out while she fires circuit boards to melt the metals into extractable goop.
Black market e-waste processing is the economic pillar of Guiyu town in Shantou city. The industry employed more than 80 percent of residents three years ago.
But the global economic downturn has exerted gravity on copper prices since 2008, reducing e-waste recycling's profitability and, in turn, the pollution it expels.
However, people like Huang, who moved from Hunan province to Guiyu's Beilin village to find work 19 years ago, remain sick.
"I was told this was a place where jobs were available, and people without higher education could make money," says Huang, who is raising a family of four.
But her health deteriorated as her finances improved.
She started feeling intense back pains and stomachaches that turned out to be kidney stones.
The Yaohui Hospital in Shantou city warned her family against drinking the water when every member developed kidney stones.
The toxic byproducts of e-waste recycling are dumped into the town's waterways, poisoning the groundwater and wells, Shantou University Medical College cytological analysis professor Huo Xia says. Kidney stones are among the ailments they cause. Greenpeace East Asia reports about 30 percent of migrant workers in Guiyu had them in 2009.
Most residents are migrants lured by the e-waste processing opportunities, while many families with local hukou (residency permits) have made fortunes from e-waste and relocated outside because of the pollution. They employ the migrants to run their businesses in their absences.
Huang says her family buys drinking water from the neighboring areas for 2 or 3 yuan (31-47 US cents) per 3 liters.
"But we must use polluted water for washing vegetables and dishes," she says.
People like Huang say they don't want their children to go through what they have.
The 31-year-old Zheng Shouren, from Jiangxi province, has suffered from chronic bronchitis for two of the five years he has worked as a plastic cutter in an e-waste storehouse.
"I cough a lot every day, and there is a lot of phlegm," he yells, above the screech of a saw that throws up rooster tails of acrid smoke.
"Our boss only drives into town on weekends to check on the business and won't stay long."
Chen Demin quit working as a plastic cutter to escape the toxic haze two years ago to wash the cut fragments.
The 28-year-old extends cracked hands for examination. One peeling fingertip bleeds.
He washes the shards in a solution of lime powder or saltwater to separate different toxic yet valuable substances.
"It's too sad to even look at my hands and too painful to straighten them," Chen says.
"I often wear gloves packed with lotion to keep them from hurting. It's like a toothache in my fingers and palms."
Chen and other Guiyu workers are still laboring despite the drop in market prices for the precious metals they extract.
"The recession will pass," Chen says.
"And business will get better when the price picks up. It's just a matter of time."
2011年10月27日星期四
Donor dads are meeting in Toronto
Two fathers who live worlds apart — one in the West Bank, the other in California — are meeting in Toronto for the first time this weekend.
The lives of Ismael Khatib, 45, a mechanic, and Reg Green, 82, a journalist, couldn’t be more different. And yet they are bound by a life-altering experience. They both lost their young sons to a gunman’s bullets. And they both allowed their dying children’s organs and tissue to be harvested for transplants.
As a result of two violent deaths — and the generosity of two grieving families — 11 lives were saved. Another two people regained their sight.
Khatib and Green are coming here for a 10-day mission to encourage Canadians to sign donor cards. At a more personal level, they are making the long trek to Canada to honour Ahmed, who was 11 when he died in 2005, and Nicholas, who was 7 when his life ended in 1994.
Their schedule will include a visit to Toronto General Hospital, walks in memory of the boys and organ and tissue donation drives in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7. The donor dads may take in a Maple Leaf game.
On Monday, with the support of MPPs from all parties, Conservative Frank Klees will introduce a bill to create an alert system, much like the Amber Alert, for children under 18 in urgent need of an organ or tissue transplant.
In a recent telephone interview with the Star, Green spoke enthusiastically about his meeting with Khatib. “There is a common thread of giving across a barrier in both his case and ours,” says Green.
The two men have conversed on Skype. Khatib, in a telephone interview from the West Bank, said the face-to-face meeting will bring a measure of good out of tragedy. “Meeting him will increase my conviction that what I did was right,” Khatib said through an interpreter.
Canada is the venue for Green and Kahtib’s first meeting because of the efforts of George Marcello, 56, who received liver transplants in 1995 and 2005. His health challenges have led him to devote himself full-time to fundraising and public-awareness campaigns.
It is Marcello who felt that bringing Green and Khatib to Canada would highlight the role that donors can play and go a long way to improving the dismal sign-up rate in Ontario. A former fitness trainer, he has organized walks through Ontario and across Canada through Step by Step, the charity he runs from his modest home in Little Italy that his parents left him and his siblings. His Torch of Life was blessed by Pope John Paul II in 2001 and has now been carried by children in rallies throughout Canada, the U.S. and Italy.
The visits of the two men are being made possible with help from the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the Canadian Peres Centre for Peace, Step by Step, Iman Ali Roukieh of the Muslim Girls School and several others, including Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Palestinian doctor whose three daughters and a niece were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli shelling.
Here are the stories of Nicholas and Ahmed.
Nicholas Green died on Oct. 1, 1994. Seven-year-old Nicholas, his parents, Reg and Maggie, and his sister, Eleanor, 4, were on a European holiday that had started in Switzerland a week before.
Late one night, as they drove down the highway from Naples to Sicily, a car raced up beside them. The two occupants shouted and gestured for Green to pull over. Sensing danger, he accelerated.
“The two cars raced beside each other,” Green said in a recent conversation from his home in La Canada, California. “Then there was a tremendous explosion and the window behind the driver’s window, where the two kids were sleeping, was blown in. A moment later the driver’s window was blown in.”
The car dropped back and disappeared.
Reg and Maggie, in the front seat, were frantic. Maggie looked back; both children seemed to be asleep. Reg sped down the road hoping to get help. About 15 kilometres along they came upon police and ambulances at another accident scene. Reg pulled over, and the extent of Nicholas’s injury became evident.
“When I opened the car door, the interior light came on and Nicholas didn’t move.” He looked closer and saw that the boy’s tongue was sticking out unnaturally. “I had been a journalist long enough to know that was a very bad sign.”
He had been shot in the base of the brain.
Two days later, the doctors told Reg and Maggie that they couldn’t save Nicholas. He was brain dead.
It was Maggie who asked doctors whether organs and tissue from their “magical little child” could be used for transplant.
Reg recreates that terrible moment: “I remember thinking, ‘How are we going to get through the rest of our lives without him?’ But then suddenly there was this possibility that somebody could benefit from this. There was that sense that, although he didn’t need that body any more there were a lot of people out there who desperately needed what that body could give.”
The lives of Ismael Khatib, 45, a mechanic, and Reg Green, 82, a journalist, couldn’t be more different. And yet they are bound by a life-altering experience. They both lost their young sons to a gunman’s bullets. And they both allowed their dying children’s organs and tissue to be harvested for transplants.
As a result of two violent deaths — and the generosity of two grieving families — 11 lives were saved. Another two people regained their sight.
Khatib and Green are coming here for a 10-day mission to encourage Canadians to sign donor cards. At a more personal level, they are making the long trek to Canada to honour Ahmed, who was 11 when he died in 2005, and Nicholas, who was 7 when his life ended in 1994.
Their schedule will include a visit to Toronto General Hospital, walks in memory of the boys and organ and tissue donation drives in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7. The donor dads may take in a Maple Leaf game.
On Monday, with the support of MPPs from all parties, Conservative Frank Klees will introduce a bill to create an alert system, much like the Amber Alert, for children under 18 in urgent need of an organ or tissue transplant.
In a recent telephone interview with the Star, Green spoke enthusiastically about his meeting with Khatib. “There is a common thread of giving across a barrier in both his case and ours,” says Green.
The two men have conversed on Skype. Khatib, in a telephone interview from the West Bank, said the face-to-face meeting will bring a measure of good out of tragedy. “Meeting him will increase my conviction that what I did was right,” Khatib said through an interpreter.
Canada is the venue for Green and Kahtib’s first meeting because of the efforts of George Marcello, 56, who received liver transplants in 1995 and 2005. His health challenges have led him to devote himself full-time to fundraising and public-awareness campaigns.
It is Marcello who felt that bringing Green and Khatib to Canada would highlight the role that donors can play and go a long way to improving the dismal sign-up rate in Ontario. A former fitness trainer, he has organized walks through Ontario and across Canada through Step by Step, the charity he runs from his modest home in Little Italy that his parents left him and his siblings. His Torch of Life was blessed by Pope John Paul II in 2001 and has now been carried by children in rallies throughout Canada, the U.S. and Italy.
The visits of the two men are being made possible with help from the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the Canadian Peres Centre for Peace, Step by Step, Iman Ali Roukieh of the Muslim Girls School and several others, including Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Palestinian doctor whose three daughters and a niece were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli shelling.
Here are the stories of Nicholas and Ahmed.
Nicholas Green died on Oct. 1, 1994. Seven-year-old Nicholas, his parents, Reg and Maggie, and his sister, Eleanor, 4, were on a European holiday that had started in Switzerland a week before.
Late one night, as they drove down the highway from Naples to Sicily, a car raced up beside them. The two occupants shouted and gestured for Green to pull over. Sensing danger, he accelerated.
“The two cars raced beside each other,” Green said in a recent conversation from his home in La Canada, California. “Then there was a tremendous explosion and the window behind the driver’s window, where the two kids were sleeping, was blown in. A moment later the driver’s window was blown in.”
The car dropped back and disappeared.
Reg and Maggie, in the front seat, were frantic. Maggie looked back; both children seemed to be asleep. Reg sped down the road hoping to get help. About 15 kilometres along they came upon police and ambulances at another accident scene. Reg pulled over, and the extent of Nicholas’s injury became evident.
“When I opened the car door, the interior light came on and Nicholas didn’t move.” He looked closer and saw that the boy’s tongue was sticking out unnaturally. “I had been a journalist long enough to know that was a very bad sign.”
He had been shot in the base of the brain.
Two days later, the doctors told Reg and Maggie that they couldn’t save Nicholas. He was brain dead.
It was Maggie who asked doctors whether organs and tissue from their “magical little child” could be used for transplant.
Reg recreates that terrible moment: “I remember thinking, ‘How are we going to get through the rest of our lives without him?’ But then suddenly there was this possibility that somebody could benefit from this. There was that sense that, although he didn’t need that body any more there were a lot of people out there who desperately needed what that body could give.”
2011年5月18日星期三
Adjuvant Drugs May Aid Clearance of Some Stones
Adjuvant use of tamsulosin or nifedipine after extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) improves stone free rates in patients treated for non-lower pole renal stones 10-20 mm in diameter, Brazilian researchers reported at the American Urological Association 2011 annual meeting.
In a double-blind study, Fabio Vicentini, MD, and colleagues at the University of São Paulo randomly assigned 136 with radioopaque non-lower pole kidney stones to receive daily treatments of 0.4 mg tamsulosin, 20 mg nifedipine, or placebo for up to 30 days after a single session of SWL. Patients were considered successfully treated if they no radiographic evidence of stones or they were asymptomatic with stone fragments 4 mm or less in size at any time during weekly follow-up.
The success rate was 60.5% in the tamsulosin arm, 48.6% in the nifedipine arm, and 36.8% in the placebo group, according to data in the researchers' poster presentation. The differences among the study arms were not statistically significant.
Among patients with 10-20 mm stones, however, those in the tamsulosin and nifedipine had significantly higher success rates (61.9% and 60%, respectively) than placebo recipients (26.1%). The study revealed no significant differences in stone clearance among patients with stones 5-9 mm in size.
Compared with placebo, adverse events rates were significantly higher with nifedipine than placebo (28.5% vs. 2.6%), but not with tamsulosin.
The three treatment arms were similar with respect to pain intensity and time to clearance.
In a double-blind study, Fabio Vicentini, MD, and colleagues at the University of São Paulo randomly assigned 136 with radioopaque non-lower pole kidney stones to receive daily treatments of 0.4 mg tamsulosin, 20 mg nifedipine, or placebo for up to 30 days after a single session of SWL. Patients were considered successfully treated if they no radiographic evidence of stones or they were asymptomatic with stone fragments 4 mm or less in size at any time during weekly follow-up.
The success rate was 60.5% in the tamsulosin arm, 48.6% in the nifedipine arm, and 36.8% in the placebo group, according to data in the researchers' poster presentation. The differences among the study arms were not statistically significant.
Among patients with 10-20 mm stones, however, those in the tamsulosin and nifedipine had significantly higher success rates (61.9% and 60%, respectively) than placebo recipients (26.1%). The study revealed no significant differences in stone clearance among patients with stones 5-9 mm in size.
Compared with placebo, adverse events rates were significantly higher with nifedipine than placebo (28.5% vs. 2.6%), but not with tamsulosin.
The three treatment arms were similar with respect to pain intensity and time to clearance.
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