The New Nation - Internet Edition

Clinical waste management

INDISCRIMINATE dumping of clinical wastes pose a serious threat to public health. Health experts fear outbreak of contagious diseases at any time because of careless handling of tonnes of clinical wastes by hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centres and pathological laboratories. The issue merits urgent attention of the concerned authorities.

According to the Private Clinic and Laboratory Act 1982, all health service providers are supposed to be registered with the Ministry of Health. It is estimated that there are more than one thousand hospitals and clinics of public and private origin in Dhaka City and about 400 in the port city of Chittagong. But only 10 percent of them are reported to have approval for operating upon patients. A private organisation engaged in hospital waste management estimates that the hospitals and clinics in Dhaka generate not less than 10 tonnes of wastes a day. It is more than two tonnes in Chittagong. No secure method of disposal of the harmful substances is followed in the hospitals. The wastes are carelessly thrown into roadside bins.

The unincinerated pathological wastes like discarded blood, bandages, body fluid, amputed limbs, chemical and pathological reagents are dangerous sources of bacterial and viral infections. Syringe and hypodermic needles, broken ampules and sharp surgical equipment may cause serious injuries to the cleaners. The hospitals and clinics appear to be callous while dumping wastes. One private organisation in Dhaka is known to be managing clinical wastes commercially. But its facilities are quite insignificant to what are needed. Adequate arrangements for incineration of hospital wastes must be made a precondition for registration of hospitals and clinics.

Depression grips US combatants

ROUGHLY one in every five US troops who have survived the bombs and other dangers in Iraq or Afghanistan now reportedly 'suffers from major depression' or 'post-traumatic stress' and the toll is estimated at 300,000 or more. An independent study, the first major survey from outside the government, that was carried out by the Rand Corp, said only about half of those with mental health problems have sought treatment and even fewer of those with head injuries have seen doctors. Based on Pentagon data that more than 1.6 million were deployed in the two wars, the researchers of the survey study calculated that about 300,000 are suffering from mental health problems.

Nineteen per cent - or an estimated 320,000 - may have suffered head injuries and there is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, researcher Terri Tanielian was quoted as saying. The Rand study, the first large-scale, private assessment of its kind, included a survey of 1,965 service members across the US, from all branches of the armed forces and including those still in the military as well as veterans who have completed their service. The findings of the study are said to appear 'consistent' with mental health reports from within the US government.

The most prominent and detailed Pentagon study on the military's mental health that is released regularly to the public is the army's survey of soldiers, taken annually at the battle zone since 2003. The most recent one last fall, as stated by the media, found 18.2 per cent of army soldiers suffered from mental health problems such as depression, anxiety or acute stress in 2007, compared with 20.5 per cent the previous year. Lieutenant General Eric Schoomaker, Army Surgeon, is quoted to have commented, 'They're helping us to raise the visibility and the attention that's needed by the American public at large t"

The hungry's right to food

Maswood Alam Khan

The central issues that were focused in the just concluded conference in Rome (3-5 June, 2008) on "World Food Security: the challenges of climate change and bioenergy" were soaring food prices, climate change and bio-fuels. The urgency of the issues resonates with a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council which urges nations of the world to review "any policy or measure which could have a negative impact on the realization of right to food".

"The fundamental right of everyone to adequate food to enjoy freedom from hunger" is a birthright bestowed by God upon every living being including humans---a right, a claim nobody can withdraw, revoke, rescind or rewrite. If a man dies from hunger due to a policy or a measure taken by a person or a nation, the person or the nation must stand trial for homicide and the punishment for such an offence must not be lesser than what the war criminals in Nuremberg trial were awarded.

In nature, free oxygen is produced by the light-driven splitting of water during oxygenic photosynthesis. Green algae and cyan bacteria in marine environments provide about 70 percent of the free oxygen produced on earth and the rest is produced by terrestrial plants. If a measure taken by a nation gradually destroys all the green algae, cyan bacteria and the terrestrial plants without a measure taken to replenish the organisms we all will die from air hunger, a process called asphyxia that is used to maim or kill in capital punishment, suicide, torture and warfare. Should not the head of the nation responsible for such cataclysmic deaths of humans stand trial for a pogrom?

Of late, a few nations in the Occident have been tinkering with a lethal tool to snatch food away from mouths of hungry people the world over; they have been producing agro-fuel, more appropriately called biofuel (mainly ethanol and biodiesel), undermining access to food for people on the ground that biofuel will replace fossil fuel (gasoline, diesel etc.) and can contribute to the solution of a range of problems including reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, provide a renewable and therefore sustainable energy source, and increase the agricultural income for rural poor in developing countries.

But, in reality hopes and dreams of such floral achievements have turned out to be nightmares. The cure so prescribed has rather been far worse than the disease itself! Liquid biofuel, mainly extracted from sugarcane and maize and to a lesser extent from wheat, sugar beet, cassava, rapeseed, and palm oil to produce ethanol or biodiesel, has already contributed to the steep increase in food prices without a corresponding increase in income. Large scale plantation of crops meant for biofuel has been causing evictions of vulnerable people, reduction of biodiversity and competition for water.

Most liquid biofuel production, distribution and use leads to as much and sometimes more greenhouse gas emissions than the use of fossil fuel, when both the direct and indirect consequences are taken into account, especially on unavoidable land shifts that will be required by any expansion of such production.

Agrofuel has been one major factor driving the prices of food commodities upwards, because of the competition between food, feed and fuel for scarce arable land. One study estimates that an extra 100 million hectares of land would be required for a worldwide blend of 5 percent of agrofuel by 2015.

Taken as a whole, liquid biofuel meets today around one percent of the world road transport needs, and yet the share of the total agricultural plant production is huge forcing the world into a "food-versus-fuel" battle or in other words a war between a car owner in a developed country and a hungry man in a developing country. A wealthy car owner in America will fill his or her fuel tank of 50 liters with biofuel produced from 200 kilogram of maize, which would have been enough to feed one poor person in Bangladesh for one year.

Brazil is the leader in using parts of its vast sugarcane plantations for the production of ethanol. The second major player is the United States producing ethanol from maize and the EU is involved, mainly using rapeseed and to a lesser extent soybean and sunflower oil, for biodiesel production.

Among many physiological needs food security is the prime need for human survival. FAO defines food security as a "situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life"

In 1996 heads of states in a FAO-sponsored world food summit promised that they would do their best to eradicate hunger in all countries with a view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half the then level no later than 2015. In 1996, at the time of that summit, the number of undernourished people in developing countries was about 823 million people.

Had the commitments made in 1996 been followed up, the number should have been reduced to 583 million hungry people in 2008.

The tragic fact is that the number of undernourished people in the world now is probably over 900 million, in other words, many more than in 1996 when the process to halve the number was started. Another two billion endure malnutrition due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Yet, the rich of the world can provide food to feed twice its current population. Therefore, in a world overflowing with riches, hunger is not inevitable; it is a violation of human rights.

Hunger is not caused by scarcity in terms of production capacity, but is due to poverty in terms of income or assets. Starvation and hunger, paradoxically, exists also amidst plenty. The fact that many are hungry in spite of sufficient production capacity means that insufficient measures have been taken to protect and ensure assets or income for food-insecure people. Had resources and income been more evenly distributed, there would have been, even under present circumstances, enough food for all. Food which is now sold as feed for animals, for fish in the aquariums or for pets, would have been bought at competitive prices by people if they had the income to do so.

The Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen says: "What holds up Indian food consumption today is not any operational inability to produce more food, but a far-reaching failure to make the poor of the country able to afford enough food".

The current crisis has been driven by what the World Bank estimates is an 83 per cent rise in overall food prices worldwide over the past three years.

As of March 2008, wheat and maize prices were 130 and 30 per cent higher, respectively, than a year earlier. The cost of rice has more than doubled since the end of January 2008.

Right to life is a fundamental right. It includes 'right' to adequate means of livelihood. However, there is no law to prevent hunger. The result is that when a person steals a piece of bread it is a crime, but at the same time omission on the part of the system of governance to prevent starvation is not considered to be a crime. This is the peculiarity of the present system of law. Virtually there is no vicarious liability of the state in matters of preventing hunger.

The 'right to food' should be much more than a slogan only. As propounded by some delegates in the Rome conference, time has come for developing nations like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Ethiopia to frame law to give 'right to food' a legal status as a subject that may be tried in a court of law so that in situations such as the current one when the prices of food undergo a sudden increase, the government will not be allowed to remain passive.

Inspiration may be sought from certain existing good practices, for instance the adoption of Famine Codes in India and reliance on those codes by courts, or, in Brazil, the recent national system of food security (SISAN) based on the Law on Food Security in 2006.

Mozambique is also advancing on the 'right to food'. The country's adopted overarching poverty reduction strategy includes rights-based food security as a cross-cutting issue.

The latest success is the approval of the revised food security and nutrition strategy in October 2007. This strategy stipulates food security as a matter of right and calls for the implementation of all human rights principles. The strategy calls for administrative and legal recourse mechanisms and suggests developing a 'right to food' law.

The right to food is about freedom from hunger. This can be interpreted in two different ways, associated with different readings of the term "hunger". In a narrow sense, hunger refers to the pangs of an empty stomach. Correspondingly, the right to food can be understood, roughly speaking, as the right to have two square meals a day throughout the year. In a broader sense, hunger refers to under-nutrition. The right to food (i.e. to be free from under-nutrition) then links with a wide range of entitlements, not only to food itself but also to other requirements of good nutrition such as clean water, health care, and even elementary education.

To eradicate hunger, a byproduct of overall poverty, a second "Green Revolution"---reminiscent of the first "Green Revolution" of 1960s---has to be floated in all the agriculture-based countries through massive investment in agriculture in order to make up for the short-sighted policies of the past.

In China, GDP growth originating in agriculture has been estimated to be 3.5 times more effective in reducing poverty than growth outside agriculture, and for Latin America 2.7 times more. According to the World Bank, cross-country comparisons show that on average, GDP growth originating in agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as GDP growth originating outside agriculture.

Poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, and hunger are inter-related concepts. Poverty is an extremely complex phenomenon, which manifests itself in a dense range of overlapping and interwoven economic, political and social deprivations. These include low income levels, hunger, poor health, insecurity, physical and psychological hardships, social exclusion, degradation and discrimination, and political powerlessness and disarticulation. "Poverty is an insult" said Mahatma Gandhi, "Poverty stinks. It demeans, dehumanizes, and destroys the body and the mind…if not the soul. It is the deadliest form of violence."

Therefore, policy instruments should be designed to address not only the low income and consumption aspects of poverty, but also the larger and complex social dimensions.

For whom the bell tolls

Praful Bidwai

Nothing seems to be going right for the Indian National Congress, which has recently suffered election reverses in 11 states, including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal and Uttarakhand. Now, the Bharatiya Janata Party has defeated it in the Karnataka Assembly elections to rule a Southern state for the first time.

The Karnataka outcome is a huge morale-booster for Hindutva, and a source of despondency for the Congress.

It's a significant setback for secularism. But ironically, it's unlikely, as explained below, to produce a BJP breakthrough in other Southern states. Yet, it highlights the Congress's decline and leadership crisis, and should jolt it into radical course correction.

The BJP won 110 out of the Assembly's 224 seats not because people believed it would govern better, but because it ran a focused campaign and got its caste/social group arithmetic basically right. This was centred on the Lingayats in the North and diverse upper-caste groups on the Southern coast.

Besides consolidating this base, the BJP gained in central Karnataka. In Bangalore, it won 17 of 28 seats because successive Congress-led governments have messed up the city.

The BJP presented itself as a united and cohesive organisation, with a clearly identified leader (BS Yeddyurappa). He got sympathy because he had been unfairly dumped by the small Janata Dal (Secular) from a power-sharing arrangement.

The Congress's campaign was lacklustre, and failed to project a leader from among many contenders with clashing identities. The JD (S) couldn't overcome the stigma of rank opportunism and venality, and lost more than half its seats. The Congress was on the defensive because of rising prices, in addition to the agrarian crisis and unemployment. The BJP cynically exploited the Jaipur bombings in Karnataka's communally charged atmosphere.

The BJP also gained from divisions in the secular vote in a three-way contest. Its aggregate vote (33.9 per cent) is lower than the Congress's 34.6. But it won 30 more seats-because its vote is concentrated; the Congress's is evenly spread.

However, one must not underrate the BJP's great gains from its strategy of communally polarising Karnataka-by laying a Hindu claim to the syncretic-Sufi Baba Budangiri shrine in Chikmagalur, fomenting violence in Mangalore, Belgaum and Hubli, drumming up hysteria on false allegations of cow slaughter, and resort to hate-speech and -crime, well-documented by the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum.

It's no accident that Narendra Modi was the BJP's star campaigner. Communalism has been crucial to the BJP's dramatic growth in Karnataka, from 4 per cent of the vote and 4 Assembly seats in 1989, to 28 per cent and 79 seats in 2004. The Congress has never fought the BJP's communalism, or questioned its lack of pluralism and inclusiveness. However, the BJP's win in Karnataka is unlikely to open the road to power in Andhra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The politics of these states is dominated by two parties/coalitions.

Karnataka is the only Southern state where the main non-Congress political space was occupied by the Right-wing Congress (O) in the late 1960s, and later, the Janata Party. In the other states, that space was taken by secular regional parties-DMK, AIADMK, Telugu Desam, etc-and in Kerala, by the Left.

The Janata legacy facilitated the BJP's entry into Karnataka. This can't happen in the other Southern States. The Karnataka victory may be a one-off affair.

Indeed, as Election Commission data shows, the peculiar distribution of the BJP's vote in Karnataka will work against it in the national elections.

If all the Assembly segments vote in the next Lok Sabha elections exactly as they did now, the BJP would win only 10 of Karnataka's 28 seats, down from 18. The Congress would soar from 8 to 14. This won't be a breakthrough even in Karnataka, leave alone the South.

The Karnataka election's true significance lies in the grim message it carries for the Congress: it may face the prospect of a rout in the next Lok Sabha election unless it urgently takes thorough-going, comprehensive and radical-as distinct from piecemeal, cosmetic and half-hearted-measures to reform itself.

The Congress faces three crucially important crises. First, there's a crisis of political strategy. This is the party's inability to garner mass support and run an efficient electoral machine while articulating a vision for society.

The Congress no longer works at the grassroots. It doesn't quite know what are its social constituencies, and what message it should give them. Nor does it know how to demolish the opposition case against it. It's not good enough to have a few clever spokespersons who turn and twist words. The Congress needs leaders and cadres who speak with conviction.

Finally, there's the leadership crisis. The Congress cannot countenance a democratically- elected leadership independent of the Nehru-Gandhi family. But it lacks the courage to call this leadership to account when it loses.

The Congress still prevents the emergence of autonomous regional leaders. It doesn't project its leaders except in a dynastic mould, without subjecting them to a results-based credibility test.

Unless the Congress boldly and honestly confronts these crises, it cannot resolve them. Ultimately, the corrective measures it takes must be related to policies and programmes. The Congress should know: it's not enough to pass the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. It has to be accompanied by mobilisation of the state and party machineries, and a high-powered public awareness campaign. This alone can prevent large-scale corruption and the scheme's sabotage.

DNA technology in detceting crimes

Md. Kamruzzaman Ferose

DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid is the chemical store house of an individual's genetic material. It is a tiny threadlike molecule that contains all the information required for the life process. It is the hereditary blueprint passed on to us by our parents. It governs the inheritance of all the characteristics of an individual such as, eye color, hair color, stature, bone density, personality, likes, dislikes etc. It is a component of virtually all cells in human body. A Person's DNA is same in each cell and do not change throughout lifetime. Any biological evidence like, blood, saliva, semen, hair, teeth, bone tissue etc. therefore, can serve as a potential source of DNA.

DNA Profiling is a process of extracting and analyzing DNA of a biological sample taken from an individual (e.g. victim, suspect, accused) or from the crime scene. In humans about 99.9% of DNA we inherit from our parents is identical among all individuals and difference exists in only 0.1% DNA. The analytical process generates a digital output, which is called the DNA profile. Except for identical twin, every individual has a unique DNA profile.

Forensic DNA Analysis: Forensic DNA analysis usually consists of comparing DNA extracted from crime scene evidence (e.g. blood stain, weapon, cans, bottles, glasses, cigarette butt, personal items etc.) with DNA extracted from the blood of a suspect or accused. In case of sexual assault, the DNA extracted from the semen sample recovered from the victim is compared with the DNA sample taken from the suspect.

Applications DNA Technology in Criminal Investigation: Forensic science uses techniques developed in DNA research to identify individuals who have committed crimes. DNA from semen, skin, or blood taken from the crime scene can be compared with the DNA of a suspect, and the results can be used in court as evidence.DNA technology has made it possible to identify individuals from traces of biological samples. This remarkable technology provides exclusion as well as positive identification with virtually 100% precision.

Personal identification: Personal identification is particularly useful to solve criminal cases like murder, rape, theft or burglary. In these situations comparison is usually made between the samples recovered from the crime scene/victim with the blood samples taken from the suspect. The use of forensic DNA analysis in criminal cases depends first and foremost on the availability of biological samples from the crime scene.

Paternity test: When carrying out a paternity test the DNA pattern of mother, child and the alleged father is compared. A child inherits half of his/her DNA from each parent. Every STR marker in the child's DNA profile therefore should be present in either the mother or father's profile. It can also be used to settle immigration dispute to establish that individuals are true children/parent/siblings in case of family reunification.

Identity of disaster victims: Personal DNA profiling also allows the identification of victims of plane crash, road accidents, explosions, terrorist attacks or fire disasters. In many cases the body found is either severely burnt or recovered body/body fragments are in an advanced stage of decomposition. It becomes then impossible to find out the identity. In such situations, DNA profiles of their tissue samples are compared with close relatives to confirm the identity.

Inheritance dispute: This type of DNA testing often needed to settle an inheritance dispute. There are two basic approaches to solve these cases. The first is to obtain an autopsy sample of the deceased father and generate the DNA profile. The second is to reconstruct the genotype based on surviving family members.

Social Issues: Despite the many benefits offered by DNA technology, some critics argue that its development should be monitored closely. One fear raised by such critics is that DNA fingerprinting could provide a means for employers to discriminate against members of various ethnic groups. Critics also fear that studies of people's DNA could permit insurance companies to deny health insurance to those people at risk for developing certain diseases. The potential use of DNA technology to alter the genes of embryos is a particularly controversial issue. The use of DNA technology in agriculture has also sparked controversy. Some people question the safety, desirability, and ecological impact of genetically altered crop plants. In addition, animal rights groups have protested against the genetic engineering of farm animals. Despite these and other areas of disagreement, many people agree that DNA technology offers a mixture of benefits and potential hazards. Many experts also agree that an informed public can help assure that DNA technology is used wisely.