DMCH bone marrow transplant to start

10 patients suffering from cancer –multiple myeloma and lymphoma— have been selected and six of them were being prepared for the first set of transplants.

Health minister AFM Ruhal Haque unveiled the plaque of the sophisticated unit in a milestone event and said it has opened ‘a new horizon in Bangladesh’s medical science’. “Don’t do any short-cuts. Follow strictly what you learnt in your training in USA. This is very high-tech procedure. If you deviate, you will fall behind,” he told its trained personnel. The centre has been set up on the ninth floor of the new DMCH building, which was remodelled, with the help of the Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). MGH trained up its nurses and doctors while the government spent about Tk 200million for the whole project. Centre in-charge Prof MA Khan said they were expecting to start the first transplant on October 26 -- an autologous bone marrow transplant in which one’s own bone marrow is used. “It’ll depend on the bone marrow collection. We have already started the collection,” he said . Khan said they had selected 10 patients suffering from cancer –multiple myeloma and lymphoma— and six of them were being prepared for the first set of transplants. In bone marrow transplantation, doctors replace damaged or destroyed bone marrow – the soft and spongy tissue inside bones – with healthy bone marrow stem cells to treat different types of blood cancer, certain genetic blood and immunity disorders like thalassemia, and severe aplastic anaemia. There are no official data about people needing bone marrow transplants in Bangladesh but doctors say many go abroad for this replacement. But the costs in Bangladesh will be at less than one-third of what it costs outside. The in-charge Prof Khan said for autologous procedure the hospital will charge between Tk 0.5 million and 0.6 million while for the allogeneic in which bone marrow of siblings or donors are used would be between Tk 1 million and 1.5 million depending on patients. The second procedure, allogeneic, is more critical that he expects will be able to start after six months. The centre will appeal to the affluent people to donate for the centre so that the facility can help poor and maintain standards. It has five isolated cabins where five patients can be treated at a time. A patient will need to spend at least three weeks after the transplant, doctors say.

Doctor gets life for hepatitis outbreak

Dipak Desai, 63, who infected patients by re-using syringes at his Las Vegas endoscopy clinic, will be eligible for parole after 18 years under the sentence imposed by Clark County District Judge Valerie Adair. "When a trust that a patient places in his or her physician is betrayed, I don't think there is a greater betrayal in our society," Adair said in sentencing Desai. A jury in July found Desai guilty of 27 criminal counts including second-degree murder, insurance fraud, negligence resulting in substantial bodily harm and misdemeanor counts of theft and taking money under false pretenses. The hepatitis C outbreak tied to Desai's clinic was first discovered in 2007, prosecutors said.

The second-degree murder charge stemmed from the 2012 death of infected patient Rodolfo Meana. He was 77, according to local media. Authorities conclusively traced nine infections of hepatitis C back to Desai's clinic and found that another 105 people also may have been infected. Prosecutors said Desai was trying to save money by re-using syringes. Desai's practice of endoscopy involved investigating patients' symptoms by looking inside their bodies using a flexible tube and camera. "His concern was not for the patients themselves," Clark County District Attorney Steven Wolfson said in court. "Rather it was making as much money as he possibly could." Michael Washington, 73, another infected patient who testified against Desai at his trial, died in August. Also sentenced on Thursday was Dipak's assistant. Ronald Lakeman, 66, got between seven and 21 years in prison for his part in the outbreak. Desai, who suffered a stroke after his conviction in July, did not make a statement at the sentencing. His attorney, Richard A. Wright, said Desai was unable to address the court due to complications from the stroke and had not received therapy while in custody. The number of hepatitis C cases traced to Desai's clinic represents one of the largest ever outbreaks of the disease tied to a physician, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rising drug resistance threatens TB treatment

In its annual TB report, the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) said the world is on track to meet UN goals for 2015 of reversing TB incidence and cutting the death rate by 50 percent compared to 1990.

Yet around 3 million people with TB are being missed by health systems, and "superbug" drug-resistant strains of the bacterial infection are putting progress at risk. "Far too many people are still missing out on care and are suffering as a result," Mario Raviglione, the WHO's director of the Global TB Program, told reporters in London. "And still the death toll from TB - a disease that is preventable and curable - is far too high," he said. TB is often seen as a disease of the past, but the emergence over the past decade of strains that cannot be treated with existing drugs has turned it into one of the world's most pressing health problems. Of all infectious diseases, only the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS kills more people than TB. In 2012, an estimated 8.6 million people developed TB and 1.3 million died from the disease, including 320,000 deaths among HIV-positive people, according to Wednesday's WHO report, down from 8.7 million cases and 1.4 million deaths in 2011. The WHO says $7-8 billion a year is needed for a full response to the global TB epidemic by 2015, and there is a funding shortfall of some $2 billion a year. Raviglione said insufficient resources for TB were the biggest hurdle to further progress, but welcomed advances in the development of rapid diagnostic tools that allow patients to be quickly tested for drug-resistant TB strains. He also praised success in the development of potential drugs and vaccines to combat TB, noting that 10 new or re-purposed anti-TB drugs are now in clinical trials. WEAK LINKS Still, on the frontline in poorer countries, many TB programs lack the capacity to find and care for people in hard-to-reach groups - such as the homeless and marginalized, who often live outside any formal or state health system. Weak links in what health experts call the "TB chain" -connecting proper detection and diagnoses to quality treatment and care - lead to people in these groups being missed. The WHO estimates that 75 percent of the 3 million missed TB cases are in just 12 countries, with South Africa, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan among them. On the issue of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), the WHO report said the problem was not only that the links in the chain were weak, but that links were not even there. The UN health agency estimates that 450,000 people fell ill with MDR-TB in 2012 alone, with China, India and Russia worst affected, followed by another 24 other countries. More worrying, about 16,000 MDR-TB cases reported to WHO in 2012 were not treated, with long waiting lists a growing problem. Raviglione said it was unacceptable that increased diagnosis rates were not matched by more access to MDR-TB care. "We have patients diagnosed but not enough drug supplies or trained people to treat them," he said. Grania Brigden, a TB adviser for the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, said the failure to improve rates of diagnosis and treatment for drug-resistant TB costs lives. "The horrific scale of preventable suffering and death caused by the spiraling drug-resistant TB crisis must spur governments, donors and WHO to mobilize the political will and secure the funding ... to tackle this deadly epidemic head-on," she said. The WHO's report is based on data from 197 countries and territories that together have more than 99 percent of the world's TB cases.

HIV drugs may fight cancer

Interest in using so-called CCR5 inhibitors to fight tumors was fuelled last year when US researchers, testing the drugs on mice, reported a marked reduction in aggressive breast cancer cells spreading to the animals' lungs.

Researchers from the Thomas Jefferson University Kimmel Cancer Center described the results as "dramatic" after they were published in the Journal of Cancer Research. Now industry analysts at Citi believe Merck & Co is set to take things to the next stage by testing its CCR5 drug vicriviroc in cancer patients. The product was abandoned as a treatment for HIV in 2010 following an unsuccessful study. Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb - which also have similar drugs in their portfolios - could follow suit, Citi said in a note on Friday. Asked to comment on the suggestion that it would start testing vicriviroc in patients in 2014 as part of a combination therapy for cancer, a spokesman for Merck said: "We have not disclosed any such plans." Citi said it expected vicriviroc to re-enter clinical testing in combination with cancer immunotherapy as Merck explores its potential across multiple tumor types, including melanoma, colorectal, breast, prostate and liver cancer. Immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to fight cancer, is a hot new area for cancer research, with some experts predicting the approach will in future form the backbone of many cancer treatments. However, drug combinations are expected to be critical to its success as oncologists will need to block cancer cells on several fronts at once. One option is to combine two immunotherapies, while another approach, also being pursued by other companies like Roche Holding AG and AstraZeneca Plc, is to combine immunotherapy medicines with different drug types. CCR5 inhibitors are one such option, given the encouraging signals from pre-clinical research. As these drugs have already been studied in HIV, their development could be relatively rapid. Pfizer could also start clinical trials in cancer with its approved CCR5 drug Selzentry, which is currently marketed for HIV via the ViiV Healthcare alliance with GlaxoSmithKline and Shionogi & Co Ltd. Bristol, meanwhile, has a dual CCR2/5 inhibitor in mid-stage Phase II development, which is being tested for diabetes and kidney disease. More from this section

DG drops pvt firm's data centre access order

The order came two days after bdnews24.com reported the matter.

The Director General’s (DG) office told bdnews24.com that its earlier order had been revoked on Sunday. On Nov 6, the DG Khondokar Md Shefayetullah, in a surprising order, gave a private firm full access to the MIS’s ‘data centre’ to enable what the order describes as ‘automation’ of doctors’ confidential annual performance reports. Following the directive, Director Admin asked the ACR office to hand over all the annual confidential reports of the 23,000 officers, most of them doctors, to the private firm Nazdaq Technology. bdnews24.com carried a report on Friday, prompting the Director Admin to review the step. He told bdnews24.com on Saturday that, now, only 100 ACRs, under strict government supervision, would be given for ‘automation’ on an experimental basis. The DG’s step had even surprised the Senior Secretary of the Public Administration, who had told bdnews24.com on Friday that there was no question of the ACRs being shared with others. He said the data was highly confidential and the room where they were managed was out of bounds to general people. Some officials had earlier told bdnews24.com that the DG’s office had awarded the automation job to Nazdaq without floating any tender as one of the firm’s patrons was an influential contractor of the DG office. Health Minister AFM Ruhal Haque had told bdnews24.com on Friday that he had not known of the development before being told about it, and promised to investigate.

Hallelujah! Gospel via social media

Dear Followers I understand there are now over 10 million of you!" the pontiff wrote on his nine accounts, which publish simultaneously in languages including Latin, Polish, and Arabic.

"I thank you with all my heart and ask you to continue praying for me."

The first non-European pope in 1,300 years has tripled the number of followers of the @pontifex handles since succeeding Benedict XVI in March, according to the Vatican, which announced Francis had reached 10 million after adding together the followers of all his accounts.

This would make the pontiff more popular than the New York Times and just behind rapper Kanye West, according to websites.

But he still has a lot of Tweeting to do before he can catch up with the three most followed people on Twitter: pop stars Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, who have more than 40 million followers each.

The Vatican has long been interested in using the latest technologies to keep in touch with the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and spread the faith, with radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi setting up Vatican Radio in 1931.

Nazi-looted trove contains lost works by Chagall, Dix

Customs investigators seized the 1,400 artworks, dating from the 16th century to the modern period and by artists such as Canaletto, Courbet, Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec, last year, an official said.

While experts consider the works to be of huge artistic value, the task of returning them to their rightful owners could take many years and poses a huge legal and moral problem for German authorities.

The haul, found in the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of a war-time art dealer, is one of the most significant discoveries of works looted by the Nazi regime and could be worth more than $1 billion, according to a German magazine.

Gurlitt has since vanished and authorities have not explained why it has taken them about a year to announce the massive find. The paintings, which were found in generally good condition, are being stored in an undisclosed location and they will not be published online.

"When you stand in front of works that were long considered lost, missing or destroyed, and you see them again, in a relatively good condition - a little bit dirty but not damaged - it's an incredible feeling of happiness," said Meike Hoffmann, an art expert from Berlin's Free University who has been assessing the find.

Systematic Plunder

The Nazis systematically plundered hundreds of thousands of art works from museums and individuals across Europe. Thousands of works are still missing.

Investigators chanced upon the art after Gurlitt, believed to be in his seventies, aroused their suspicions as he travelled by train between Zurich and Munich, carrying thousands of euros in cash, according to German media. He has since disappeared.

"We cannot say where the accused is, we do not know ourselves," said Reinhard Nemetz of the public prosecutor's office in Augsburg.

Jewish groups have urged that the origins of the art works be researched as quickly as possible, so that, if looted or extorted, they can be returned to their original owners.

For some families missing art constitutes the last personal effects of relatives murdered during the Holocaust.

Officials declined to comment on the value of the art. Germany's Focus magazine, which revealed the find and prompted authorities to go into the open, said it could be worth over 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion).

"We were able to confiscate 121 framed artworks and 1285 non-framed works, including some famous masterpieces," Nemetz said. "We had concrete clues that we were dealing with so-called 'degenerate art', or so-called looted art."

Cornelius's father Hildebrand Gurlitt was, from 1920, a specialist collector of the modern art of the early 20th century that the Nazis branded as un-German or "degenerate" and removed from show in state museums, or displayed simply to be mocked.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels recruited Gurlitt to sell the "degenerate art" abroad to try to earn cash for the state. Gurlitt bought some for himself and also independently bought art from desperate Jewish dealers forced to sell.

Troubling Questions

Investigators said the collection comprises works which are clearly from the Nazi regime's state-owned collection of "degenerate art". Others, which may have had several owners or may have been extorted from owners fearing Nazi persecution, will need extensive research.

Siegfried Kloeble, from Munich's customs investigation office, said media reports that authorities had failed to disclose the find for two years were wide of the mark. The search took place in 2012, and not, as reported, in 2011.

Hoffmann said that among the previously unknown paintings was a self-portrait by Dix, in impeccable condition, and probably painted around 1919.

A similarly unknown Matisse painting, of a seated female figure that he painted several times, probably dated from the mid 1920s and was confiscated in 1942.

Germany has faced criticism that the restitution process is too complicated and lacks sufficient funding. Nemetz said there were no plans to publish a list of the works online and people should come forward with inquiries.

Jewish restitution groups have often criticised state and museum authorities for not doing enough to research works' origins themselves and instead leaving the onus on relatives.