City battles HIV drugs shortage

Around 40,000 HIV patients dependent on ART centres for treatment are at risk of missing their medication due to rising shortage in drugs The nationwide shortage of HIV drugs distributed at Anti retroviral Therapy (ART) cen tres has affected people in and around Ahmedabad too, with patients being turned away or given medicines for three days as opposed to the norm of six months. The reason, say experts, is National Aids Control Society's (NACO) delay in filing a tender for the supply of the medicine. The shortage, say doctors, is alarming because irregular consumption of medicines could lead to patients developing drug-resistant HIV.

When sisters gift love and life

On Rakshabandhan, men vow to protect their sisters. Yet, Mirror comes across cases where sisters have gone far beyond mere rituals by donating their organs and giving their ailing brothers anew lease of life

Paresh Makwana, a 35-year-old daily wage labourer, suffered from kidney stones which ended up damaging both his kidneys. Newly married Makwana was fighting for his life when his 25-year-old sister, Varsha, gave him a new life by donating her kidney.

Makwana has two brothers and sisters, all of whom are married expect Varsha who readily agreed to donate her organ to save her brother's life.“When she saw me bed-ridden, she decided to sacrifice her dreams of getting married and donated her kidney to me.Very few sisters are like her,“ he said.

Makwana explained, “In our society, men do not generally marry a woman with one kidney as she is at risk of ailments in future. So, she decided against getting married. She will devote her life to god. Varsha took this decision only for me. She has gifted me a new life.“

Meenaben Marwari, the 40-yearold wife of a sarpanch from Vadodara district, donated her kidney to her 37year-old brother Mahesh Dagra. Talk ing to Mirror, her husband Mukesh Marwari said, “Mahesh was diagnosed with diabetes which affected both his kidneys. My wife was worried about his survival so she decided to donate her kidney to her brother.“

He added, “Though my wife is middle-aged, she didn't think twice before donating her kidney. Her love surprised all of us.“ On Rakshabandhan, a brother promises to protect his sister with his life when she ties the sacred thread of rakhi on his wrist. Yet, 11 sisters took on the role of protector in 2014 by donating their kidneys to their brothers.In comparison, only two brothers donated their kidneys to their sisters.

Similarly, out of the total 21 sibling kidney donations in 2013, 19 were made by sisters for their brothers whereas only two brothers donated their kidneys to their sisters. In 2014, no liver donation has been recorded among siblings. Regarding gender disparity in organ donation, Dr Priya from Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Centre (IKDRC) said, “Out of the total 348 kidney donations made in 2014, only 3.7 per cent are provided by siblings. Of this, only 15 per cent of them are provided by brothers which is saddening.Why should sisters always donate their organs? Sibling love should be both ways. Brothers should also donate to save the lives of their sisters.“

Dr Vivek Kute, nephrologist at IKDRC said, “In most families, males are the main bread-earners. They generally avoid donating organs as they do not want to risk their lives and the survival of their families.“

Passport dept excuses curfew delays

Passport offices in the city accepteddocuments of applicants who failed to reach the offices for scheduledappointments on Wednesday due to curfew

With several passport seekers missing their appoint ments at the passport seva kendras on Wednesday due to the curfew, the city passport department on Thursday allowed walk-in interviews to facilitate the affected applicants. As per reports, only 40 per cent applicants made it for interviews on Wednesday. While exceptions were also made for applicants who reached after their scheduled time due to the curfew on Thursday, others will have to apply for a second appointment.

Illegal kilns thrive, harm environment, brick by brick

GPCB says around 60 of the 75 kilns inthe city operate in an unauthorised manner as they do not have the board’s NOC.However, the board has not taken action yet as it is ‘short-staffed’

A growing number of unauthorised brick kilns in the city are posing environmental concerns and health hazards. According to Gujarat Pollution Control Board’s (GPCB) report submitted to State Environment Ministry on July 24, around 60 of the 75 kilns in the city are illegal.

Civil Hospital, You’re Disgustingly Filthy

Every year same story: two resident docs down with dengue...BJ Medical College students arefurious with Civil Hospital authorities who keep proving year after year thatthey are incapable of maintaining hygiene on campus

Time and again, Civil Hospital authorities have been pulled up for not maintaining cleanliness on its premises, especially during monsoon. But it seems to make no difference. The hospital’s apathy towards providing a clean environment to its patients and doctors is evident from the most recent cases where two students of BJ Medical College Hostel were diagnosed with dengue. In the past, too, doctors at Civil have fallen victim to the aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the vector transmitting dengue.   

BLOODY UNCIVIL

A 10-year-old blood cancer patient fromMadhya Pradesh was not allowed blood transfusion at GCRI till his helplessfather had arranged for a replacement blood donation at Civil Hospital. It isunethical for hospitals to seek mandatory donations.

In a city like Ahmedabad which is lauded for cost-effective and quality healthcare services, Gujarat Cancer Research Institute (GCRI) kept a 10-year-old leukaemia patient’s blood transfusion on hold till his father managed to arrange for a replacement blood donation at Civil Hospital.

IN DEEP WATER

The Centre has identified 34,846 habitations in Gujarat considered arsenic andfluoride-affected even as the state government sits on more than Rs 150 croreprovided for the purpose

Thousands of people across the state have been condemned to drink groundwater with naturally high quantities of arsenic and fluoride that can have serious repercussions on their health, according to the central government. However, the Gujarat government has turned a blind eye to the concerns raised by the Centre asserting that not a single case of fluorosis and arsenicosis has been reported from the state. To top it all, a sanctioned sum of over Rs 150 crore by the Union government meant for ‘arsenic and fluoride-affected habitations’ remains unused.

Government and private hospitals have maintained that they have been steadily receiving patients with ailments caused by arsenic and fluoride, but the state continues to maintain an ostrich-like approach to the grave situation.

Vaccine related deaths: Gujarat tops the chart

Gujarat has one of the most extensive child immunisation programme in the country, butthe state has reported 38 deaths following vaccine shots, the highest in India, since 2012
Sunita Bora, nine-year old tribal girl living in Vadodara died suddenly in 2010. She was one of the two students who died after they were administered a anti-cervical cancer vaccine that was meant for observation studies.

One-third IITans flunk in medium of instruction

IIT-Gn students excel in science papers, but many fall flat in English; the institute conducts test to check their level and train them accordingly to make them industry-ready

English trouble

It is no reflection on their technical skills, as the students of Indian Institutes of Technology are hailed as the outstanding brains of the country and are lapped up big corporates at sky high salaries. But when it comes to proficiency in English, nearly one third of the students of Gandhinagar campus flunk.

Toxic Power

A nation-wide survey has found the five biggestcoal-based power plants in the state – two govt-owned and three in pvt sector –to be among the worst polluters; they function at low efficiency, emit harmfulgases and one of them discharges effluent in the river! 
Gujarat is often touted as a role model state in industrialisation, but shockingly the biggest coal-based thermal power plants in the state are violating pollution norms. The list of polluters includes both government and private sector facilities which have been reported as inefficient.

Maninagar police refuse to file FIR, play agony uncle

A helpless and distraught 22-year-old woman has beentrying to report her abusive husband to Maninagar police for the last twomonths. But the cops are apparently so 'concerned' about her family life andher son's future that they have been playing agony uncles instead ofregistering an FIR. According to the law, it is the statutory duty of a policeofficer to register an FIR whenever any information pertaining to a cognisableoffence is reported to him/her. However, despite approaching the cops fivetimes to report the alleged dowry harassment, an FIR has not been registered.Police inaction has only worsened Sarita Joshi's (name changed) plight. Herhusband, who allegedly used to thrash and abuse her when she was living withhim, now goes to her mother's house and allegedly beats up both the women.

Malware trapp

Smartphones have become the most convenient way ofstaying connected with the world 24/7. There are applications or 'apps' foralmost everything right from keeping track of your day-to-day appointments,fitness, shopping and recreation, to even reminding you to drink water and eatfood. And if you are someone who heavily banks on Android apps to run your lifesmoothly, here is a word of caution.
According to the police, the trend of cybercrime has shifted from PC to cellphones, with Android operating system becoming the perfect platform for cyber criminals to launch malware-ridden apps. Case in point: Anita Mishra, 21, student of a private college, had downloaded an Android app called 'Photobook' on her phone. It was a photo-editing and designing app.

THE CAT’S WHISKERS

Whilecity youth lose their head over cheap party drug ‘meow meow’ that is deliveredat their doorstep, NCB fails to walk the talk

Easy to find, 20 times cheaper and 10 times more addictive than cocaine, ‘meow meow’ is the new fad in the city’s drug scene. The dangerous psychoactive drug, which is banned in party havens like Mumbai and Goa, is home delivered in Ahmedabad through internet pharmacies. While more and more youths are getting hooked to the drug that causes nosebleeds, anxiety, physical and sexual aggression as well as long-term mental health problems, the Narcotics Control Bureau here is busy holding ‘awareness events’ in colleges instead of cracking down on dealers to curb this menace.

Education goes rurban

Students of 51 grant-in-aid and private schools willsoon have to opportunity to interact with their counterparts from governmentschools in rural areas and learn from each other. The project, christened asGyansetu, aims at bridging the gap between children of different socioeconomicbackground. Under the initiative, private schools like Anand Niketan, DPS,Prakash Higher Secondary School, CN Vidyalaya, Udgam School, Diwan Ballubhaiand others will exchange their students with rural government schools for 10out of the 200-odd educational days every year.

HOW JUVENILE

The state registered a 51 per cent increase incrimes against children in just a year, reveals NCRB data. But does anybodycare?

* The district Child Working Committees (CWC), the final authority to dispose of cases related to protection and rehabilitation of children, are short of members.

* Existing CWC members do not meet regularly

* Even the selection panel that chooses members of CWC has not been formed yet

KILL PILL

In blatant disregard forthe law, medical stores in the city are selling life-threatening abortion pillsto minors without seeking their age proof, doc’s prescription and an approvalletter by the guardian

Girls aged 10-19 years account for 11 per cent of all births worldwide and 23 per cent of the overall burden of disease (disability- adjusted life years) due to pregnancy and childbirth, according to World Health Organisation. Fourteen percent of all unsafe abortions in low-and middle-income countries are among girls aged 15–19 years. About 2.5 million adolescents have unsafe abortions every year, and they are more seriously affected by complications than are older women.

Student snorting, NCB men snoring

State Narcotics Control Bureau is acutely aware of the factthat drug abuse is rampant in colleges, but WILL NOT arrest offenders even asNCBs elsewhere are on overdrive. Its excuse: We don’t want to ruin students’career

Gujarat registered 100 per cent growth in drug trafficking in 2014, highest in the country, surging past New Delhi, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh. Despite such a damning figure, Gujarat NCB has failed miserably in checking drug abuse on college campuses in the city.

Chai pe Kharcha

It was the ubiquitous tea that was a game-changer for the BJP government. Now, an expensive ‘Modi chai’ is leaving a bad taste among rural youth in the state
It was a simple, game-changing ‘Chai pe Charcha’ that catapulted Narendra Modi to national fame. In the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Modi had addressed a series of ‘Chai pe Charcha’ (connect with the electorate over a cup of tea) programmes that received tremendous response. Even US President Barrack Obama was charmed by PM Modi serving up the brew from a silver teapot on the lawns of Hyderabad House when he came visiting.

AIR-POCALYPSE

If commuting on Ashram Road makes you nauseous, don’t be shocked. You are breathing in the most polluted air in the city; industrial areas such as Narol and Odhav are less polluted

It might not shock you if told that Delhi is the most polluted city in the world (World Health Organisation report last year). But what if you get to know that the air you are breathing in aapnu Amdavad is more poisonous? Ahmedabad records the highest dangerous concentration of air pollutants in the country on certain days every month, if the data procured from the state’s first air quality index station in Maninagar is anything to go by.

But if you think that air pollution is highest in industrial areas, you are mistaken. The air in commercial and residential areas is most poisonous with highest concentration of unhealthy pollutants. Ashram Road and Sabarmati are the most polluted in the city, while air pollution is within limit in Narol and Odhav, data from Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) suggests (see box for pollution levels in different areas).

No place for the old

Harassed at home by their own kids, vulnerable and easy targets against crimes, Ahmedabad accounts for the highest number of cases against senior citizens in the state

— On June 13, a 29-year-old painter asked his mother to accompany him to a nearby field in Vatva. He gagged and raped her before abandoning her. When no one heard her cries, the shocked woman mustered courage to reach her daughter’s house in the same locality.

— Hemant Mehta, a 77-year-old retired government officer lives alone at a flat in Praladnagar. Recently when his eldest daughter Kinjal Mehta came to meet him, she found that Rs 50,000 was missing from the house. Police investigation revealed that one of the two nurses employed to look after him had stolen the money and escaped.

Blessed by tech, Blocked by babu

Sumita Singh, a 52-year-old Canadian citizen of Indian origin, came to aapnu Amdavad in February to make her family "complete". After a long wait, her prayers bore fruit when she held her surrogate daughter in her arms. It was a picture perfect moment for her. And the preparation to go back home started. However, she had not reckoned with the Indian bureaucracy and its ways.

Foreign Residents Registration Office (FRRO) in Ahmedabad, which grants exit visa to foreign couples' children born on Indian soil, has held back the document for the child on the ground that there is 1 per cent discrepancy between the DNA reports of the child and the parents. This, when according to medical experts, 90 per cent match is enough to conclude that baby belongs to a couple.

Malnourished newborns up by 50 per cent

Stateinvested Rs 250 cr to improve infant mortality rate, yet number of low-weightkids surged from 9,170 in 2012 to 13,456

At a time when the state government is struggling to curb high infant mortality rate, the number of low birth weight babies are on the rise in Ahmedabad district.

Fraudship request: Cyber flirts `cash in' on singletons

Crime Branch hasregistered seven cases where the accused pose as NRIs and propose marriage tosingle men and women online before conning them out of lakhs of rupees

Anjali Mehta (name changed), a banker, fell in love online with Anil Mu kesh (name changed) who claimed to be a doctor with the United Nations, settled in the UK.He professed undying love to Anjali and told her he was taking a transfer to India for a happily-ever-after. All seemed well till one day, she received a call from a `customs official', seeking Rs 20 lakh in duties. As Anil was shifting to India, he had sent all his valuable medical equipment to Anjali's address. But the `official' sought the amount as customs duty. Anjali got even more confused when Anil began emotionally blackmailing her, and asked her to pay up. On July 4, she again got a call from the `official', demanding the money but when she tried to call back on the number, the phone had been switched off.

Helpless and wanting Anil to come and live with her, she transferred Rs 20 lakh to the bank account given by the caller through real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS). But Anil never called back and that was the end of the love story.

Denied passport twice, surrogate baby finally flies to Japan with mum

Following lack of clarity on the baby's nationality in the surrogacy certificate, the case was referred to MEA; passport officials later issued the child an identity certificate

A middle-aged Japanese couple who became parents of a child born to a surrogate mother through IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) had to face bureaucratic hurdles to procure a passport for their newborn.

Reason: According to the surrogacy certificate submitted to the passport office, the couple's embryo was transferred into the surrogate mother in September 2014, she tested positive for pregnancy in June 2014 and the baby was delivered in February this year.

If the conception took place before the embryo transfer, as the document issued by Anand-based Dr Nayna Patel stated, the child was clearly not theirs and therefore the nationality of the newborn was questionable.So, the officials at Regional Passport Office sought clarity on the matter from the commissioning parents.

Rs 95L microscope kept locked at Civil

The Cryo Em, an electron microscopeworth Rs 95 lakh that can study Ebola and other highly pathogenic viruses, isgathering dust in a locked laboratory

The most advanced electron microscope that can study Ebola and mutated viruses has been put under lock and key at the E-1 ward on the ground floor of Civil Hospital.

US visa glitch - Students cancel tickets, worry getting late for first sem in US varsities

Several students who have securedadmission in US universities, have cancelled the tickets as their visa interviewshave been rescheduled

A technical glitch that has brought down the computer system for issuing visas and passports at US embassies worldwide will not be fixed until at least next week, according to reports. The issue has left hundreds of visa applicants in the city worried. Several students, who have enrolled in the US varsities that will soon begin their sessions, have been left in the lurch.

GANDHI LOST IN MODI'S MODEL

Ahmedabad'shallmark of consensual politics inherited from Gandhi is being replaced bytop-down private sector approach to urban development that has no room for thepoor. This is the conclusion of a study funded by Bill and Melinda GatesFoundation

SUSHILABEN MANIBHAI NAIDU, 44

The government did not provide any financial assistance while displacing us. We have created these huts with our savings. The place is very unsafe for girls and being a mother of four girls I am always concerned about their safety. My husband had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that our entire family would commit suicide if we weren't provided with houses but we never got a response.

Nothing juvenile about Facebook crime cases

Cyber-crime related to the networking website has gone up by 40 per cent and majority of these crimes are being committed by adolescents

**Hemant Mehta, is a bright student studying in a private school. In October, this 14-year old created a fake Facebook account of one of his male classmates who used to bully him. Tech-savvy Hemant who couldn't win a physical fight with the bully used social media to get even.

**Last April, Kushal Shah, a 17-year-old science student of a reputed school received a call from the police for committing a cyber-crime. Kushal liked a girl in his coaching class but she rejected his proposal. In a bout of rage, he created her fake account and posted an edited picture of them posing as a couple.»

**Aditya Rawal was known to be studious and a math lover. At the age of 16, he could solve math problems of class XII. But in his 2014 annual examination; he unexpectedly received low marks. Angry, Aditya hacked in to his math teacher's Facebook account and posted slangs.

Here in our city… GODS UNITE ALL

A day after Somnath Temple banned the entry of non-Hindus without permission,Mirror's Kuldeep Tiwari and Rupsa Chakraborty visited the temples in the cityposing as a Muslim couple. To their surprise, they were warmly welcomed notonly by the temple staff and the security guards but also by the devotees.This, in a city that saw one of the worst communal riots in the country in 2002and earned itself the ignominy of being religiously intolerant

BHADRAKALI TEMPLE

LAL DARWAZA

When the reporters arrived at the temple posing as a Muslim couple who had come to seek the goddess's blessings, a group of women cops got up and welcomed them. The reporters found it quite surprising. The cops took them inside the temple, and requested the priest to offer them the prasad. Citing security reasons, a woman cop asked our reporter to lift her veil. “This is just part of routine check. Please do not take any offence. Everyone is welcome here. Do come again,“ said the cop. She also familiarised the duo with the temple's rich heritage before seeing them off with a smile.

Body blow

While more and more Amdavadis aredonating their bodies for advancement of science, medical colleges refuse toaccept them citing lack of facility to preserve bodies or reluctance to workafter office hours

While medical colleges across the country are struggling to meet shortage of cadavers, city colleges are turning away donors' bodies. Lack of infrastructure to preserve the bodies is the reason that colleges like NHL and Sola give while refusing to accept the donations. LG and BJ medical colleges accept bodies, provided it is brought during office hours.

Ushmaben Shah, a 79-year-old cancer patient who breathed her last on May 22, 2015, wanted to donate her body to benefit medical students.But this noble approach hit a roadblock when medical colleges refused to take her body citing several excuses.