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Heart Diseases Main Cause Of Iranian Deaths

Society Desk

Cardiovascular diseases have been identified as the leading cause of deaths in Iran.
According to a new report by Iran’s Health Ministry, everyday 300 individuals die of heart-related diseases in Iran.
Heart diseases are blamed for 39 percent of deaths in Iran. The report also shows that 19 percent of deaths are due to heart attacks in the country.
About 9.3 percent die of brain stroke and 3.1 percent die of high blood pressure.
The report also shows that 300 Iranians die of heart diseases every day in the country.
Every year, 35,000 to 50,000 heart surgeries are performed in Iran, it added
In the past centuries, infectious diseases were the leading cause of death worldwide but currently non-communicable diseases are taking the biggest toll on the world population.
Statistics show that of every 800 annual deaths in Iran, 360 are caused by cardiovascular diseases.
The chances of a woman over 40 being diagnosed with heart-related diseases have increased by 39 percent, while the likelihood of heart diseases in men over 40 has increased by 49 percent.
The report says consumption of unhealthy foods cause obesity and high blood pressure, which are the main culprits in cardiovascular diseases.
Non-communicable diseases are a consequence of behavioral, hereditary or standard of life factors, such as smoking and an improper diet. Examples of non-communicable diseases include diabetes, cancer, mental illness, common injuries and heart disease.

Preventive Measures
By employing all of the natural preventive measures stated below, one can safely and effectively defend the body against non-communicable diseases.
Exercise every day. Physical activity removes disease-causing toxins through sweat. It also prevents cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems and reduces the risk of cancer and diabetes. It is recommended to perform at least 30 minutes of exercise.
Eat foods high in lecithin. Lecithin is a potent substance that regulates cell nutrients. It also helps you maintain an ideal body weight and prevents your body from accumulating unnecessary fat. Foods rich in lecithin include soybeans, grains, legumes and peanuts.
Consume foods high in antioxidants. The active ingredients of antioxidants are called flavonoids. These substances keep the brain healthy and prevent cancer and other non-communicable diseases. Foods rich in antioxidants include cranberries, dried prunes, plums and pinto beans.
Train the brain. Playing videogames and solving crossword puzzles everyday can help exercise the brain and prevent memory loss and deterioration. Performing these activities on a daily basis will improve all of the regions of the brain.
Do yoga every day. Yoga strengthens the mind and body. It prevents lifestyle diseases, especially cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. Yoga can also relieve symptoms of diseases once they manifest. One hour of yoga is recommended.

Students Stuck With Shoddy Textbooks in Afghanistan

New textbooks, printed as part of an ambitious multimillion dollar exercise to reform the curriculum in Afghan public schools, have been found to contain glaring mistakes, adding yet another burden on a cash- and resource-strapped sector of this war-torn country.
The ministry of education forked out $91 million for the printing of new textbooks as part of a planned massive overhaul of the public education system in Afghanistan. The authors were paid handsomely to ensure the books were of the highest quality, Topix reported.
Instead, teachers and students have been saddled with barely legible study guides and are struggling to make sense of textbooks that are riddled with both typographic and factual errors.
Civil society and some parliament members have placed the blame on “nonchalance and corruption in the ministry of education”. Unrepentant, the latter has assured the public the mistakes will be rectified.
Farooq Nekbin, a teacher in Habibia High School in the capital, Kabul, said there are “many scientific and factual mistakes” in the new textbooks. For instance, he pointed out that the invention of the microscope has been dated differently in the textbooks for 10th, 11th and 12th-grade students.
A teacher of mathematics at the same school, who did not want to be identified, said, “The figure for the Newton, the SI unit of force--shown on page 40 of the class 11 textbook--is completely wrong.”
Nadera Saeedi, the head of the Mathematics Department at Rukhshana High School in Kabul, was of the opinion that the authors recruited to draft the new texts simply plagiarized the content, despite having been being sponsored by the Education Ministry to travel to Iran, Turkey and Jordan to study textbook writing.
“The text of the books has been copied from other countries’ books,” she said. “They are very difficult (to understand); nobody can solve the exercises.”
One of the physics teachers at Rukhshana high school said she found 15 mistakes in the first 15 pages of the new physics textbook for 11th-grade students. Even the illustrations contained errors, she added.
Furthermore, the books have been organized illogically, with no concept of the education levels in Afghanistan.
Teachers are now struggling to make sense of the new curriculum.
This oversight could have particularly destructive consequences in Afghanistan, where the literacy rate was a miserable 30 percent in 2010.
As one of the world’s least developed countries, Afghanistan has fought hard to make progress towards the Millennium Development Goal of providing universal access to education by 2015.
This latest holdup in the public education sector could set Afghanistan back several years in meeting the internationally determined target.

Longer Lives, Lower Incomes for Japanese Women

When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.
Taguchi, a divorcee who lives alone, is heavily dependent on her pension to support what will likely be a lengthy retirement, given that women in Japan live, on average, about seven years longer than men.
A survey conducted earlier this year by the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed that women account for 87.3 percent of Japan’s record number of 50,000 centenarians, IPS reported.
“I am lucky I did not quit my job when I married, as was the norm for women of my age,” Taguchi told IPS.
Indeed, she is one of a very small number of women in Japan for whom old age is not synonymous with poverty and loneliness.
Most of her contemporaries who were part-time workers or full-time homemakers in their youth and middle age now draw monthly public pensions of just 500 dollars or less--barely enough to cover their living costs.
A patriarchal social structure that has boxed women into the role of caretaker and homemaker is largely responsible for the vulnerable situation many old Japanese women now find themselves in.
According to government data, 70 percent of women leave their jobs when they start a family, returning to the workplace--often as part-time workers--only when their children are older. This pattern significantly reduces their chances of drawing a decent pension after retirement.
Additionally, the fact that women are experiencing increasingly long life-spans means that many outlive their husbands and become entirely reliant on the state welfare system.
Social experts here say Taguchi’s sunset years provide a spotlight into the diverse issues that women in Japan’s graying society face today.
“More women than men face poverty in their old age given their (life-spans) and lower incomes,” pointed out Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging populations at Tokyo Kasei University, as well as an advisor to the government on gender and policies that affect the elderly.
Japan currently has the world’s fastest aging society. Experts estimate that by 2025 more than 27 percent of the population will be over 65 years old.

Wildlife Crime Threatening Stability of Nations

The global illegal trade in wildlife is worth $19 billion (£12 billion) a year and is threatening the stability of some governments, according to new research.
Carried out for conservation group WWF, a report highlights a “new wave” of organized wildlife crime by armed groups operating across borders, Guardian reported.
It says funds from trafficking are being used to finance civil conflicts.
The study comes as Malaysian officials captured about 20 tons of ivory in one of the biggest seizures ever made.
According to Jim Leape, WWF International director general, the report underlines the fact that wildlife crime has escalated drastically over the past decade and now posed a greater threat than ever.
“This is about much more than wildlife,” he told a news conference. “This crisis is threatening the very stability of governments. It has become a profound threat to national security.”
Rebel militia groups in Africa are cashing in on demand for elephants, tigers and rhinos to fund civil conflicts, said John Scanlon, secretary-general of Cites, the organization that governs the trade in endangered species.
“We saw earlier this year with rebel groups coming from Chad and Sudan going into northern Cameroon slaughtering 450 elephants, taking the ivory for the purpose of selling it in order to buy arms for local conflicts,” he said.
He added that there had been similar issues in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The report suggests that the illicit sale of animals and plants is the world’s fourth largest illegal trade after narcotics, counterfeiting of products and currency and the trafficking of people.
It says two factors were spurring the growth of the trade. The first was the absence of credible law enforcement and other deterrents that reduced the risk to organized criminal groups. The second was increased accessibility of illegal products via the Internet.

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