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| Then that one of these insects gave positive of the virus of the western Nile, it is adapted to know how to avoid his unpleasant stings |
| Avoid the annoying mosquitoes |
For Andrea Alemañy
Washington Hispanic
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| The stings of the mosquitoes generally involve a small whitish node in the skin. |
The stings of the mosquitoes are very annoying, but not only that. These unpleasant insects are also vectors of serious illnesses, like the Virus of the western Nile (VNO), the malaria and the fastidiousness.
In fact, recent tests in the area south-west of the District of Columbia have found positive mosquitoes with VNO, specially in the field of Fort McNair.
Last year, six persons and 62 mosquitoes turned out to be positive with this virus. What indicates this is that, although the risk of becoming infected with this illness is quite low, it is important to know how to prepare his annoying stings.
Symptoms
The stings of the mosquitoes generally involve a small whitish node in the skin, which becomes red on having spent the minutes. Also it includes itch, which can last from two until ten days. Rarely there can happen cases of severe allergic reactions, which can include distension of the gullet, wide areas in the skin affected by reddening and difficulty to breathe. If these allergic symptoms appear it is necessary to look for immediate medical attention.
Causes
The females mosquitoes need blood to feed and they are those who sting the persons. While they suck the hemoglobin, they leave part of his saliva in the skin. This saliva contains proteins that remain in the epidermis. The immune system reacts against this substance, what finally causes the node and later itch.
Risk factors
The mosquitoes choose his victims for his extract, the dioxide of carbon that they exhale and the chemists that the perspiration of the individual perspires. The experts also believe that the mosquitoes sting more men, persons with blood type O and individuals with excess weight. Also to these insects the heat attracts attention of them.
Prevention
The best way of preparing the mosquitoes stings is to control the population of these insects. They need water suspended to be able to reproduce. Eliminate this water especially after raining. For it liberalization canaletas, change the water of children's swimming pools at least once per week, change the water of the stations of birds. Also check pots that I did not use, like empty flowerpot holders in the courtyard or garden. They exist also repellent of insects that it can spray on his skin, or use citronella sails. The repellent ones do not kill mosquitoes, and there are some of them that pesticides are considered by the Agency of Environmental Protection. The DEET with a concentration of 10 to 30 % is the repellent one recommended by the experts. A concentration of 10 % protects for two hours. Remember that these chemists are poisonous and use only the necessary thing. Do not use DEET in the hands of small children or in minor babies of two months.
Also it can use T-shirts long sleeve, pants and socks to reduce the surface of skin exposed to stings. Also, to use clear colors in the clothes can be a good idea.
Home-made remedies
If one scratches the stings, it is possible that it breaks the skin and to cause an infection. Instead of scratching, apply a hidrocortisona cream, (0.5 % or 1 %), a little of lotion of calamine or it sets a little of pasta of bicarbonate of sodium several times a day until the sting stops bothering. Antihestamínicos as Benadryl can serve also.
Virus of the Western Nile
The VNO affects the central nervous system. The symptoms of the illness change and they are serious in few persons. Close to one of the 150 persons infected by the VNO it will fall ill of gravity. The serious symptoms can include high fever, headache, rigidity in the neck, drowsiness, disorientation, comma, quakes, convulsions, muscular weakness, loss of the vision, numbness and palsy. These symptoms can last several weeks and the neurological effects can be perms.
Some persons present lighter symptoms. Close to 20 per cent of infected persons they will present light symptoms, between them, fever, headache, pain in the body, nausea and vomiting, occasionally with distension in the lymphatic glands or cutaneous eruption in the breast, stomach and back. The symptoms can last only a few days, although there are healthy persons who have been sick several weeks. Most of the persons do not present symptoms. Approximately 80 per cent of the persons infected by the VNO (close to 4 of every 5) do not present any class of symptoms. In general, the person presents the symptoms from 3 until 14 days after having being stung by the infected mosquito.
| Organization offers a workshop for those who attend to the cancer survivors |
| The minders also need support |
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| Claudia Campos, of New Life. photo: Andrea Alemañy/WH. |
For Andrea Alemañy
Washington Hispanic
In 1996, a group of Latin survivors of cancer saw the need that existed in the community of creating a group of support for women like them. Hence New Life was born, organization without ends of lucre that offers support to women of Hispanic precedence when these are diagnosed by cancer.
Across the years, the organization has realized that they are not only the women those who are affected by the news about his illness, but every day his relatives and friends also it changes.
Really for this reason the organization has designed a series of workshops with the motive of helping these persons. Taking care of my Minders, of name of the free workshop, Thursday, the 23rd of July begins at 6:30 p.m. in the offices of New Life.
Claudia Campos, Coordinating committee of the Survivors' Program of New Life that the reason for which this program began is the fact that “the family falls ill very much when the woman is diagnosed by cancer, but although we help individually, we could not come to many. With this program, we have the opportunity to extend and to expand this service to the families that need it”.
— Who can come to the meetings?
“ The meetings split between surviving women, minders older than 18 years, adolescents, and children. Relatives can take part living with the diagnosed one, like persons who do not have blood tie but who help the woman of a form or other one”.
— Why is it important to receive help?
“ When one gives the news to the person, this generates a crisis for many Hispanics because they associate it with death. There is a destabilization in the family that, or it paralyzes the persons or they try to do too much. We are going to try to do a sure place where the persons could speak on what they are feeling”.
Every meeting will cover different and specific topics to every group, such as the communication between the families affected by the cancer and the sexuality in the couple.
For more information, they can communicate with New Life to 202-223-9100.
| To his health |
| What to do to prepare the Flu H1N1? |
For the doctor Elmer Huerta
The director Preventorium del Cáncer
Washington Hospital Center
What is done now against the flu H1N1 in the south hemisphere will be what is going to be applied against the flu that appears in the next winter in the north hemisphere. Without fear of being wrong, I can say to them that the authorities of the CDC and of the WHO are monitoreando to the minute what is done and what is not done against this pandemic in countries like Australia, Chile, Argentina and New Zealand, countries that are those that more cases have in the south hemisphere. These remarks will be the base of what is done in the USA and Europe when the flu comes from October of this year.
Then, if we are learning while we walk: what is what you can do for yourself and for his family to look after and to prepare the flu? In other words: What are the practical things, of common sense that you must do to be protected and to protect his family?
I have been looking for these recommendations and the most useful in me to understand are those that the CDC of Atlanta publishes.
What can I do to avoid to fall ill?
In this moment there is no vaccine against the new virus H1N1. It has measured that you can take every day to help to prepare the spread of gérmenes that cause respiratory illnesses as the influenza. Continue these steps every day to protect his health:
• The nose and the mouth be covered with a disposable handkerchief on having coughed or to sneeze. Dump the disposable handkerchief to the garbage after using it.
• Wash his/her/its hands often with water and soap, especially after coughing or to sneeze. The disinfectants for hands that contain alcohol also are effective.
• Avoid to touch him the eyes, the nose or the mouth. This is the way in which the gérmenes propagate.
• Try to avoid the nearby contact with sick persons.
• If it is sick, remain at home for 7 days from the beginning of the symptoms or until they have spent 24 hours since they eliminated the symptoms, the time that is major. This is done to avoid to infect other persons and to spread more the virus.
Other important measures that you can take:
• Continue the recommendations of the authorities of public health in relation to the closing school, avoid to frequent places with multitudes and take measures of social distancing.
• Be prepared by if it falls ill and has to remain at home for one week more or less; have provisions of medicines of free sale, disinfectants by means of alcohol, disposable handkerchiefs and other similar articles that could be useful, to avoid to have to go out to buy them while it is sick and to infect to others.
What is the best way of avoiding to spread the virus on having coughed and to sneeze?
If you are sick, extreme the contact with other persons as much as it is possible. If it is sick, remain at home for 7 days from the beginning of the symptoms or until they have spent 24 hours since they eliminated the symptoms, the time that is major. The nose and the mouth be covered with a disposable handkerchief when it coughs or sneezes. Dump the disposable handkerchief used in the basket of garbage. Later wash his/her/its hands and do this whenever it coughs or sneezes.
What is the best way of washing his/her/its hands and of avoiding to spread the influenza?
To wash his/her/its hands often will help him to be protected against the gérmenes. wash his/her/its hands with water and soap or with a hand disinfectant by means of alcohol. The CDC recommend that, on having washed his/her/its hands, with lukewarm water and soap, it does it during 15 to 20 seconds. When it has neither available water nor soap, it can use toallitas humid or gel disinfectant for the hands by means of alcohol. These products can be bought in most of the supermarkets and drugstores. If it uses gel, one rub the hands until the gel dries off. The gel does not need water so that it does effect; the alcohol that it contains eliminates the gérmenes that exist in his hands.
What must I do if I fall ill?
If you live in areas where cases of the piece of news have been identified influenza H1N1 in persons and fall ill with symptoms similar to those of the influenza or flu, like fever, pains in the body, I have a runny nose or nasal congestion, sore throat, nausea or vomiting or diarrhea, it owes to be able only at home and avoid the contact with other persons, except to go to the doctor.
If it has a serious illness or if it has a high risk of taking complications as the influenza, contact his doctor. His doctor will determine if it is necessary to do to him tests of detection of the influenza or to give him treatment.
If it falls ill and presents some of the following signs of warning, look for medical attention immediately.
| Actuality |
| To walk or to go in bicycle to the work helps the physical state |
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| To go to the work in bicycle delivers benefits to the health. photo: AP. |
For Carla K. Jonson
aP
To go to work walking or in bicycle helps to have the good physical state, but very few Americans do it, it indicated a study realized between more than two thousand persons of mature age who live in cities.
In the first wide study carried out in the United States on the relation between the health and the daily trip to work, the investigators found that 17 % of the workpeople walks or some portion of the route goes in bicycle towards his work.
The persons with major activity realized a better test of yield of walk in the machine of resistance — even when the investigators took into consideration his physical activity levels in his free time — which insinuates that the options chosen, on having moved, establish the difference.
For the men who took part in the study, but not for the women, an active trip also had health benefits in the index of muscular mass, the blood pressure, the levels of insulin and of lípidos in the blood known as triglicéridos. The women apparently realized walks or mounted in bicycle shorter distances and they would have realized this activity with minor energy, said the authors of the study.
The bad state of the sidewalks, the absence of routes for cyclists and eventful ways, as well as in many cases the distance between the house and the work, supports the Americans in his vehicles, said the experts.
" I would like to go in bicycle to work, but for me it is completely insecure to do it", said Penny Gordon-Larsen of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, which headed the study published Monday in the magazine File of Internal Medicine. "There is a really narrow and small area where there is no rail for bicycles".
It goes to the work in motorcar, but first it walks to take his children to the school.
The survey was realized based on tests and questionnaires between 2.364 employees who took part in a study financed by the federal government on the risks of cardiac evil. The participants live in Chicago, Minneapolis; Birmingham, Alabama; and Oakland, California. The interviews were realized during the period 2005-2006, and turned on the trip habits in the last 12 months.
The study presents a quandary: the people who is already active can be the one that decides to leave his motorcar at home. Gordon-Larsen admits that the good physical state contributes to the desire to walk to the work, but it admitted that the reverse of the currency also happens, in that to minor physical condition they give less gait desire.
In previous studies it has been demonstrated that in the countries with major activity of walk and of cycling the people have minor obesity levels. But there are few studies on the health of the Americans who walk or go in bicycle to the work, said James Sallis of the State University of San Diego, that he studies environmental and political factors that influence the physical activity.
Sallis did not take part in the new study.
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