By
Neha Sethi
Photo:Jaishree

There is a traffic jam on the road outside Delhi Public School (DPS), Mathura Road. It is the same scene every morning and afternoon. And is the school getting away with it just because it is one of the top educational institutions in the capital?

“There is a lot of chaos on the stretch in front of DPS, Mathura Road everyday, especially in the morning, when parents come to drop their children. All of them park their cars on the main road and then it’s a problem for people like us who travel through that stretch everyday,” says Arshdeep Kaur, a nurse in Escorts Hospital, who has to commute through Mathura road.

The traffic outside DPS becomes unmanageable in the morning and afternoon, but it gets even worse if there is an event taking place in the school.

The 23rd of August, a Saturday, was a particularly torturous day for Seema Kapoor, a 24-year old who has her office in Okhla. This was because the same day was also when DPS had their parent-teacher meeting. “It was complete chaos,” she says “Cars were parked on both the sides of the main road. And at some points, there were two lanes of cars.”

So where does the solution to this problem lie? Muktesh Chander, the Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic Police, puts the responsibility back on the people’s head. “The people should call the traffic help line and inform us about such traffic jams. It is also the school’s responsibility to tell us before hand so that we are prepared for it. Actually the main problem is that there is no law of Government of Delhi which says that it is compulsory for all schools to have a parking space. Most schools face this problem especially in the afternoon, when parents come to pick their children,” he says.

But try to talk to the school authorities and the Principal is not available for comment. An official from the Principal’s office, who didn’t want to be named, clarifies the school’s position. “A part of our land was taken away during the construction of the flyover in front of our school before the ASIAD games and we were promised a parking lot to compensate for that part of land,” he says. “A request regarding the compensation of land has been sent to many officials including the PWD, the Mayor of Delhi, Arti Mehra, the Police Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner of MCD and the MP of our area, but to no avail,” he adds.

The parents, on the other hand, say that they have no other option other than parking on the road. Sushma Bhasin, mother of a child studying in DPS says, “What option do we have other than parking on the road? It is up to the school authorities and the traffic police to come up with a solution, it’s not our problem.”

So, till all the parties involved arrive on a consensus on who is actually to be blamed, commuters like Seema have no other option but to find out a way to avoid that route.

By Kapou Malakar

Imagine you no more have to get those painful injections. All you have to do is to lie down, let the nuclear rays do the job of detecting and curing the ailment.
This is because nuclear energy is no more a source of energy only. It is on its way of reaching the common people as it is used to detect the cancer and many other ailments. If you didn’t know that, read further.

Nuclear medicine

The clinical discipline concerned with the diagnostic and therapeutic uses of radio nuclides (an isotope of artificial or natural origin that exhibits radioactivity), excluding the therapeutic use of sealed radiation sources.

Depending on the type of nuclear medicine exam you are undergoing, the radiotracer is injected into a vein, swallowed by mouth or inhaled as a gas and eventually collects in the area of your body being examined, where it gives off energy in the form of gamma rays. This energy is detected by a device called a gamma camera, a (Positron Emission Tomography) PET scanner and/or probe. These devices work together with a computer to measure the amount of radiotracer absorbed by your body and to produce special pictures offering details on both the structure and function of organs and other internal body parts.
(www.radiologyinfo.com) What is nuclear medicine?

World Health Organization(WHO) has identified Nuclear medicine as a branch within the field of radiology that includes X rays which uses some amount of radioactive material like phosphorous, palladium, cesium, iridium, phosphate, or cobalt.
to diagnose a medical condition.

“The radiation used in nuclear medicine is different from the radiation used in X ray procedure”, says Dr Ishita Barat , a nuclear medicine practitioner at Ganga Ram Hospital .

THE ADVANTAGES
The best part of the nuclear medicine is that it does not require any skin injections and it is only the nuclear rays that pass through the body.
material is sealed inside a seed or pellet and placed inside the body, in or near a tumor. The radiation material used in comes from radioactive iodine 125, strontium 89, phosphorous, palladium, cesium, iridium, phosphate, or cobalt.




RISKS INVOLVED

Along with benefits, nuclear medicine has its own share of side effects also. “For pregnant women and children, we actually don’t refer nuclear medicine. They are treated with other available technology like ultrasound, MRI test and so on .” Dr. Barat confirms.
Radiology is the medical imaging technologies to diagnose and sometimes treat diseases. Originally it was the aspect of medical science dealing with the medical use of electromagnetic energy emitted by X-ray machines or other such radiation devices for the purpose of obtaining visual information as part of medical imaging. Radiology that involves use of x-ray is called roentgenology. Modern day radiological imaging is no longer limited to the use of x-rays, and now includes technology-intensive imaging with high frequency sound waves, magnetic fields, and radioactivity.

Moreover, at present, nuclear technology is not cost effective. Most of the equipments required, like imaging detector such as PET camera and gamma camera, are imported from US and are costly. “Even launching such equipment in the hospital means an investment of 10 -12 crores”, says Anil Bharali, retired cardiologist from Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre.

It is an advanced form of medicine mostly used by army and DRDO( Defense and Research Development Organization) since its inception in 1960s.
According to the report of Society of Nuclear Medicine in India, there are nine hospitals in Delhi with a nuclear medicine technology branch. Apart from Army Hospitals we have Escorts Heart Inst. & Research Centre, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, All India Institute of Medical & Hospital Sciences, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital having the same technology .

The Defense Research & Development Organization (DRDO) has been responsible for nurturing and spreading the science of nuclear medicine in India, but the exposure of nuclear medicine is still at its nascent stage. No wonder many doctors are in favor of the INDO-US nuclear deal. “Energy and radiation needed for nuclear medicine can be generated from nuclear reactor only. It can be developed if the we can get the energy at a lesser cost”, Dr. Bharali adds

By
Kinga Dema
Photo:Jaishree

Those of you, who think that you are just suffering from gastritis, think again.
Gastritis should not be neglected in its initial stage as it can turn into a life threatening disease, say gastroenterologists. Gastritis, in simple term, means inflammation of the stomach. According to Dr. Rajeev Shandil, DNB registrar, gastroenterology of Apollo hospital, gastritis if left untreated may lead to gastric ulcers and stomach bleeding. Some forms of chronic gastritis may also increase the risk of stomach cancer, he adds.
The most common cause of gastritis, a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is found in almost 90 percent of the world’s population. So if you are not careful about your food habits and timings, chances are that you might suffer from gastritis.
Patients having gastritis that has developed to the stage of gastric ulcers can suffer from burning pain in the epi-gastritis region (upper abdomen), heart burn, belching or bloating and nausea. If active bleeding is present, the person might also vomit blood and see blood in stools.
So,what causes gastritis? The most common causes include alcohol consumption; use of certain painkillers, stress and of course unhealthy food habits. Surgery, burns, trauma and other serious medical problems also increases the chances of developing gastritis. Any way out? Yes, patients should take proper consultation of a doctor and make the necessary life style changes. People suffering from chronic diseases like liver and kidney disease and patients who are on medication have higher chances of suffering from gastritis. Dr Ujjwal Pradhan, a resident doctor of Apollo says that patients suffering from gastritis should eat healthy and drink lots of water. “Spicy food is not a direct cause of gastritis but it adds on to the complications,” he adds. Also, patients need to take lesser amount of tea, coffee or anything with caffeine in it.
Tshering, 25, who works in a non-government organization (NGO) in Gurgaon, regrets not listening to her doctor’s advice when she had minor gastritis three years ago. She is now suffering from chronic gastritis. “The pain is unbearable sometimes and I am always cautious,” she says.
How worse can it get? Gastritis can become dangerous when not treated on time. Patients don’t die from gastritis as such but gastritis complications can become fatal if left untreated.

So, learn to handle stress, eat healthy and live life without gastritis!

By
Marie Naudascher
Photo:Gargi

“I thought everyone would speak English in India”, regrets Saskia, 21, a Dutch student who worked for Khushii, an Indian NGO based in Delhi. “I came to help, but in the fieldwork, there is nothing but Hindi, so I recommend to every foreigner to know a bit of Hindi”.

But is Hindi an easy language to learn? “I can speak English French and German, but Hindi is really difficult” explains Cecilia, a Swiss student who took Hindi classes at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) last year. It took her almost three months to know the alphabets properly. Later, it helped her in her work with a foreign firm in India. Over the phone, she knew how to ask Hindi speaking people to put her through someone who could speak English. But she confesses she had to repeat it several times because of her mispronunciation.

Kapel Sharma, a private Hindi teacher in Delhi says that most of his foreign students cannot pronounce his name properly. “They either call me “Kaapel” or “Kapeel”. My name is Kapel”, he insists. “Phonetics is the most difficult thing in Hindi. Usually, foreigners don’t know the difference between “g” and “gh”, “k” and “kh”, “f” and “fh”. So, it is difficult for them to be understood. According to him, “it takes at least 6 months to be fluent”.

Francis Wacziarg, a businessman who left France forty years ago says “Hindi is a very difficult language, but similar to the European languages. For example, the verb is always at the end of the sentence, like in German”. Mr Wacziarg who was keen to learn Hindi took classes in Mumbai for three years. Then, he worked for many years with the locals in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkota and Delhi. Today, he can speak Hindi fluently. His daughterAude Pryia Engel, who is an opera singer in India, could read boards in the street after three lessons.

It is always better to learn Hindi in India rather than in some foreign country. Alissa Upakara, 22, a Thai social worker in Delhi, knew that speaking Hindi would help, so three years back, she had taken a short term Hindi course in Silpakorn University, Bangkok. After 50 hours, she got a Basic Hindi certificate. But when she began to work in Delhi, she realized she could not speak Hindi at all. In Thailand, she did not practice, though she could understand 60 % of a conversation.

Contrary to Alissa, Helene Ferrarini, a French student of 20, took a full two years Hindi course in Paris. It proved to be a productive exercise. She is now living in Delhi and she can buy vegetables by herself, bargain and communicate spontaneously with her Indian roommate.

For foreign students, learning Hindi is both vital and advantageous. The world's second most spoken language is not taught a lot outside India, as Spanish, English or German in Europe. Thus, Hindi has become an asset for foreigners, even outside India, because on a resume, it can make the difference.

So if you are a foreign student, along with the VISA, the vaccines and mosquito coils, you better take a Hindi conversation book… and courage!