"HOLY MEN" ENDORSES SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.

Men rape because they believe they have the right to control and to punish women who do not obey their rules of behaviour which is not due to the result of nature or evolution but societies which, through legislation and social custom, have made women second-class citizens.
Self righteous holy men/politicians are often the prime mover of this agenda of " if you had listened to me you would not have suffered the consequence of me releasing the dogs"

The Star
KOTA BARU: Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat has accused women who wear revealing clothes of giving the impression that they are selling their bodies."Women who wear such clothes are contributing to the rise in sex crimes and that is why I am in favour of any move to curb such dressing," he told reporters after launching the Kelantan Reading Festival 2005 here yesterday.
Sydney Morning Herald
Sydney Muslim leader that rape victims had no-one to blame but themselves."A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No-one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world ...," Sheik Mohamed was quoted as saying in the lecture.

Translation from the Shiv Sena’s Marathi mouthpiece Saamna’s front-page article on Monday:

Be careful and the world will appear to be good...this is the advice, born out of experience, that growing children get from grandparents. But in today’s superfast world, grandparents have been relegated to old-age homes and youth have fallen in the page-three trap. In the attempt to provide a ‘free’ atmosphere at home, parents proudly allow girls to wear skimpy clothes and give boys uncontrolled freedom.

But there are shards of glass on this modern path...we don’t see parents telling their children to tread carefully.

The rape of a minor girl at the Marine Drive police chowki has brought into focus the question of free culture. The danger of page-three culture is knocking at our doors. Many elders strolling on Marine Drive observe that one should be aware of the times.

The More incident is a blot not only on the police force but also on society. At More’s chowki, semi-nude photographs of women were found. Day by day, in the name of fashion, the skimpy nature of girls’ clothes is a sign of where society is headed.

There seems to be a competition among young women to show their undergarments in the name of a ‘below-waist’ fashion. It is no longer feasible for a family to roam on Chowpatty.

To see girls dangle a cigarette openly is worrisome. If a man is provoked by such clothes, who can one blame?

In a glamorous society like Mumbai’s, it is not possible for working women to be home before 8 pm.

But because of this free culture, respectable girls stepping out of their homes are also in danger. The advice of grandmothers was definitely apt. They spoke while facing Page 3 and Zeher posters.

One thing has to be brought to notice, that page three culture is banging on our doors. Especially for adolescent girls, the situation in Mumbai is such that there are glass shards on the path.

When these girls wear skimpy clothes and leave home, why don’t the elders of the house object? Why don’t they correct the misunderstanding that being modern does not mean wearing skimpy clothes? Why is the young generation modern in attire but not modern in thought? One after another, these questions are at the forefront.

Those who argue that there is no connection between women and girls wearing skimpy clothes and rape should keep the social structure in mind. Besides rape, it is the evil eye of men provoked by the culture of skimpy clothes that is harmful. Why encourage these perverse tendencies?

In the name of remixes, the wave of ‘sex appeal’ is ruining entire generations. If an adolescent boy develops perverse tendencies because of such hot movies and their obscene posters, and an innocent girl falls victim to that, then who is to blame.

The boy’s perversity or society.

Link : Indian Express

WHEN BIG BAD BIRD PAYS US A VISIT.

"The World Health Organization (WHO) recently urged all countries to develop or update their influenza "pandemic preparedness plans" after experts estimated anywhere between two and 50 million people could die if a pandemic hits and the world is not prepared."


Do we have enough influenza medicine on hand to treat even 22,000 patients (less than 1% of the population in Malaysia) for Bird Flu?
Remember the 1999 Nipah Virus, it claimed about 100 victims.

Bird Flu drug, Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) stocks avaliable for treatment in Asean.
Indonesia - less than 100 patients
Cambodia - 800 patients
Vietnam - 12,500 patients
Thailand - 100,000 patients (to be approve)
Malaysia - ???

Fatality Rate - Estimates of 50%~34%

Countries Hit by Bird Flu Have Little Medicine to Treat Humans

As Rich Nations Stock Up, Asians Unprepared for Pandemic

By Alan Sipress

Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; Page A09

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- As highly lethal avian influenza circulates among poultry in East Asia, posing the prospect of a worldwide human pandemic, most of the countries now affected have virtually no stocks of the medicine needed to treat the virus, according to officials in the region.

"When we have an epidemic, we cry for help," said Santoso Soeroso, a physician with a helpless smile, shuffling along the spartan hallway of the isolation wing in Jakarta's Sulianti Saroso Infectious Disease Hospital. "What else can we do?"

Soeroso said his facility, the premier hospital for treating diseases such as bird flu, has enough influenza medicine on hand to treat eight people. Each of the 33 other hospitals across Indonesia designated to receive bird flu patients have enough, on average, to treat two.

Since early last year, the virus has ravaged poultry flocks in nine Asian countries and killed at least 55 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. The World Health Organization has warned that the virus could undergo a genetic change that would make it easier for humans to contract the disease, threatening a worldwide outbreak capable of killing tens of millions of people.

The one effective influenza drug, oseltamivir, marketed under the name Tamiflu, costs up to $40 per treatment, meaning bulk purchases are beyond the means of most developing countries, officials said.

"Even if we spend all of our WHO budget, we still can't buy enough for these countries," said Hitoshi Oshitani, an influenza expert with the World Health Organization in East Asia.

By contrast, wealthier nations, primarily in Europe, already have begun ordering sufficient quantities of the drug to treat up to half of their populations should the disease spread beyond Asia.

In the United States, the government has set aside 2.3 million treatments, each of which includes 10 capsules to be taken over five days. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, based in Alexandria, last month called that amount "totally inadequate," urging the Health and Human Services Department to spend about $1 billion to buy enough oseltamivir to treat about a third of the U.S. population.

The gap between rich and poor raises questions not only about whether Southeast Asian governments will be able to cure their people in case of an epidemic but also whether these countries have enough medicine available to contain an outbreak before it races beyond the region's borders.

Walter E. Stamm, president of the Infectious Diseases Society, said his group had not taken up the question of addressing Southeast Asia's shortfall. He said the best bet for stemming a global bird flu pandemic could be to stop it where it starts. "What goes on where this first strikes has a great impact on the rest of the world," he said.

Roche, the Switzerland-based manufacturer of oseltamivir, has quadrupled production in the last two years, according to company officials. But the production has not kept pace with surging demand from developed countries seeking to build stockpiles. The typical lead time of 12 months for filling orders has grown even longer, Roche officials said.

The current backlog of orders grew after scientists determined last year that bird flu had grown resistant to another common influenza drug, amantadine. Researchers blame this on the widespread use of amantadine by Chinese farmers to treat their poultry in violation of international livestock guidelines.

n Indonesia, bird flu has devastated poultry flocks in at least 18 provinces. Last month, health officials said a farm worker had become the first Indonesian to test positive for the virus.

Yet Sulianti Saroso hospital has little money to address threats on the horizon, Soeroso said. The beds of his rudimentary, three-story facility are already crowded with patients who have polio, diarrhea and, most of all, AIDS.

"We cannot allocate our budget for things that are not here yet because we have such a limited budget," he said. "Antivirals for HIV/AIDS are a much higher priority for us," he added.

But Soeroso acknowledged that he worried there was not enough oseltamivir even for preventive use by doctors and nurses who would care for flu patients. With the entire national supply already divided up among hospitals, health officials said there was no more to go around.

In Vietnam, the country hardest hit by the disease, the government has fared a little better, stockpiling enough for at least 12,500 people through donations from Japan and the European Union, health officials said.

"If there will be a big epidemic, it would be rapidly used up," said Peter Horby, a WHO epidemiologist in Hanoi. "In the entire context of the health budget, it's not seen as a priority because it is so expensive."

Cambodia has obtained enough oseltamivir for no more than 800 people, health officials said. Much of this is earmarked for doctors and health experts investigating outbreaks.

The Thai government approved funding for the purchase of up to 100,000 treatments this year and signaled it would set aside even more money next year, according to Supamit Chunsuttiwat, a senior disease control expert at the Thai Health Ministry. But he added, "I don't think there is enough stockpile to control a widespread outbreak. We definitely need an international stockpile. There's no way out."

WHO officials, conceding that most Southeast Asian countries will never have enough of the drug to treat their people in case of an epidemic, are now pursuing the more focused goal of accumulating sufficient oseltamivir to snuff out any outbreak within its first few weeks.

Klaus Stohr, chief of WHO's influenza program, said about 120,000 treatments have been stockpiled in Asia, mostly at the regional headquarters in Manila and New Delhi, ready for rapid dispatch to the site of an emerging outbreak. According to scientific models, health officials may be able to extinguish an epidemic if 80 percent of an infected community is given the drug within the first three to four weeks and the number of cases does not exceed about 250, Stohr said.

"Beyond that, global spread cannot be prevented," he added.

Southeast Asian countries are also finalizing plans for one or more similar stockpiles by the end of this year and are looking for wealthier countries to contribute, officials in the region said.

But the hopes of many health officials rest on the proposed establishment of another international stockpile with more than 1 million treatments to be donated by Roche, Stohr said. This supply, also earmarked for use in the early days of an outbreak, would be in place later this year and then increased further early next year, he said.

David Reddy, who heads Roche's pandemic influenza task force, confirmed that discussions were underway with WHO over this proposal but said specifics have yet to be worked out.

Reddy said the company had already taken major steps to address the prospect of a pandemic, and had also offered reduced prices to governments seeking to amass a pandemic supply. He declined to discuss numbers.

Link :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/05