Olive oil is said to cure the dark circles obtained around the eyes because of stress and sleeplessness. Olive oil applied on face and other skin surfaces promotes smooth and radiant complexion. Olive oil helps to maintain the elasticity of the skin. Hence age lines can be controlled on regular use.

Olive oil heals the dry and brittle nails and softens the cuticles. The oil, when applied on the dried and cracked feet overnight, absorbs all the oil and makes the feet smoother.

Instead of chemical shaving creams, men can use olive oil with little soap as shaving cream which makes shaving easy and gives a smoother skin. An equal blend of beewax and olive oil gives a very good mixture which can be used as lip balm in cold conditions.

Olive oil can also be used for hair massage which makes the hairs look shiny, healthy and stronger. Olive oil also reduces hair fall.

A few drops of olive oil while taking bath gives the skin a healthy and a glowing look. This technique can also be used during manicure and pedicure.

Removing make-ups is always troublesome for women who regularly attend parties and meetings. Instead of chemical cleansers and detergents, if olive oil is used to remove it, it makes the work easier and effective. It will also handle the skin very smoothly and gives a natural glow.

Olive oil massage once in a week helps in opening the pores in the skin and lets the skin breathe easily and hence the healthy look.

“We have reached the next stage in management of the disease,” Burnham said. “The national focus will be on treating the increasing numbers affected by swine flu. We will move to this treatment phase across the UK with immediate effect.” The move does not mean the H1N1 virus, which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation last month, is becoming more deadly, just that it can no longer be contained. Burnham said there was a “considerable rise” in swine flu cases last week.

“We have always known it would be impossible to contain the virus indefinitely and at some point we would need to move away from containment to treatment. “Cases are doubling every week and on this trend we could see over 100,000 cases per day by the end of August. “The pressure on the system is such that it is the right time to take this step. Scientists can expect to see rapid rises in the number of cases.” Burnham added that the public should be reassured by the steps being taken to tackle the virus. He said: “We are the only country in the world to be able to offer anti-virals to everyone as well as those at greater risk.”

The government’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, said the production of a vaccine was “at an advanced stage” and denied that the outbreak was out of control. Speaking at a special briefing at the Department of Health, he said: “We are continuing to take a very firm grip on this situation. We have a big stockpile of anti-virals, the biggest probably in the world. We have vaccine at an advance stage of production.”

Donaldson added that despite its rapid spread, the virus outbreak was “following a predictable path”. The Health Protection Agency said a further 458 patients in England had been confirmed with swine flu, while the figure for the UK as a whole rose to 7,447. Efforts to trace people who had been in contact with swine flu cases would now stop and schools no longer needed to close when hit by the virus, unless particular circumstances made it necessary.

The government has said that not everybody with swine flu would receive anti-viral drugs, which may be reserved for at-risk groups. The daily collation of swine flu cases would also end because it was proving time-consuming. Instead, “more general” estimates of numbers would be given. Other affected countries already update their swine flu numbers less frequently, such as weekly or every other day. The Scottish health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, announced a similar shift in swine flu policy at a simultaneous briefing in Edinburgh.

She said: “We’ve always said it would be impossible to limit the spread of what is a contagious virus indefinitely. “We’ve always said that, when it did start to spread more widely within communities, we would require to make a judgment about when to shift efforts from intense containment to treatment, or mitigation.” Sturgeon, who is also the deputy first minister of Scotland, said “high-risk” groups such as children under five, pregnant women and the elderly would get priority access to medication.

Scotland’s chief medical officer, Harry Burns, said the country could expect to have a tenth of the UK cases of swine flu. He predicted there would be about 10,000 new cases a day in Scotland by August. He said: “It could be a bit less, it could be a bit more. It also presupposes that there isn’t a downturn, if it continues to rise at this rate, and it’s doubling approximately every week, you can do the sums yourself.” However, Scottish health officials said the swine flu infection rate may have already peaked, as the number of new cases in three hotspots in the greater Glasgow area appears to be in decline.

After infection rates peaked at 111 confirmed cases on 25 June, with Scotland experiencing the first two swine flu deaths in Europe, the rate has remained steady at about 60 new cases a day over the last week. The rapid spread in two of the major hotspots – Dunoon in Argyll and Paisley south of Glasgow – now appears to have stopped and cases have begun to decline sharply.

The official statistics on the virus were likely to underestimate the true scale of infection in the UK because now only a sample of patients in the hotspots had a diagnosis of swine flu confirmed by lab tests. Many people were thought to have such mild symptoms that they were not bothering to contact their doctors while others were being treated in surgeries without being regarded as suspected swine flu cases. In swine flu hotspots such as London, the West Midlands and parts of Scotland diagnosis of the virus was already being done by doctors rather than laboratory testing, and tracing the contacts of people with swine flu and the use of preventative anti-viral drugs had stopped.

Anti-viral drugs were still being offered to all people with symptoms. Although a bout of swine flu was currently causing less serious illness than traditional seasonal flu, three people with other serious health conditions in the UK have died after catching the virus and there are concerns it could mutate into a more virulent form. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has warned that there may be tens of thousands of cases each week this autumn, because the virus is more likely to thrive in a colder climate.

The 38-year-old man, his 32-year-old wife and two children — nine-year-old daughter and two-year-old son — were quarantined at the Bangalore airport and later shifted to the identified health facility, the official said. Four new cases were reported from the national capital which include a nine-year-old child who arrived here on Friday from Seattle by Asiana Airlines.

The other three, two women aged 40 years and 13 years and a nine-year-old boy, reported to the hospital yesterday after they had shown some symptoms. The three had reached Delhi on June 23 from the United States. The swine flu case from Gurdaspur in Punjab was an indigenous one which developed after contacts with a positive case reported on June 23, the official said.

About 645 persons have been tested so far of which 91 were found positive for swine flu. Meanwhile, screening of inbound passengers from affected countries continues at 22 international airports. Till yesterday, 54,113 passengers have been screened out of which 37,296 came from affected countries. Of the 91 positive cases, 59 have been discharged. The World Health Organisation has reported 59,814 confirmed cases of swine flu from 112 countries as on June 26. A total of 263 deaths have also been reported.

Free HIV tests also will be available in Elk Grove Village and Aurora later in the week. “There’s a quarter of a million people in the U.S. who have HIV and don’t know it. Those numbers are going to climb if we can’t get people to get tested,” said Lynne Kennedy, development coordinator at Open Door Clinic in Aurora and Elgin, which is sponsoring Wednesday’s program. Kennedy said Jeanne White Ginder will discuss her son’s experiences with AIDS, as well as the government’s role in prevention, at 1 p.m. at Waubonsee’s Academic and Professional Center, at Route 47 and Waubonsee Drive.

Admission is free. Ryan White died in April 1990. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday and Friday, the Elgin-based Renz Prevention Center is offering free HIV tests at Hunters Dance Club, 1932 E. Higgins Road, Elk Grove Village. Free testing also is available from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Open Door Clinic, 157 S. Lincoln Ave., Aurora. Kennedy said there were 286 reported cases of AIDS and HIV in Illinois in 2007 and 410 in 2008 for a spike of about 43 percent.

The super smooth poly V belt drive system offers quiet operation so you can watch TV or listen to music while you work out. When the workout is over, the Multisports Fitness Cardio-Cycle 5000 Programmable Upright Exercise Bike features rear transport wheels that allow you to easily place it in storage.

But for the Sistas Organizing to Survive — SOS — the rally was a chance to break down myths and educate black women about the realities of HIV and AIDS in their community. More than 50 women who attended the event at the Plaza Theatre in Orlando were urged to get tested and help prevent spread of the disease, which has been a leading cause of death for black women ages 25 to 44 in the state for the past 15 years.

“It hasn’t hit home how big this issue is,” said Linda Bailey 51, of Orlando, a member of the SOS advisory council. One in 68 black women in Florida is living with HIV or AIDS. However, many women are unaware they are infected, said Debbie Tucci, coordinator for the Orange County Health Department’s HIV/AIDS program.

Kathy Walker, 40, of Lake Mary has met several people who have been infected by HIV/AIDS. Walker, manager of the Orange Health Department tuberculosis program, said some women have a hard time persuading their partners to use condoms.

Young “sistas” performed realistic scenarios during the rally to give attendees a look at how AIDS can spread. They played the roles of a faithful girlfriend who gets infected by her cheating boyfriend, a promiscuous girl afraid to get tested and a 9-year-old who loses her mother to AIDS after a blood transfusion.

Hope Dorsey, a comedian at Bonkerz Comedy Club in Altamonte Springs who emceed the event, said she gets tested annually. Dr. Kevin Sherin, Orange County Health Department director, said some blacks lost faith in the medical community after the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis study, which intentionally denied treatment for poor black men who were infected with syphilis. The experiment began in the 1930s and was aimed at learning what syphilis does to a body.

“There’s fear in the health system, and there’s fear in the government,” Sherin said. “That history is still [alive] in the African-American community.” He urges people to find out if they have HIV or AIDS and to seek treatment. In Orange, 10,000 people — roughly 1 percent of the population — live with HIV or AIDS, Sherin said. And about a quarter of them don’t realize it.

There are several federal programs that can help pay for expensive medications. Although there is no cure, he said people can live long, happy lives.

“It’s like treating diabetes. You take your medication — it’s fine,” Sherin said. “Look at [basketball legend] Magic Johnson, how well he’s doing after all those years” living with AIDS.

Announcing the new swine flu cases, the Ministry of Health also notified the public that taking flu medication as a preventative treatment against H1N1 is ineffective. Flu medication is only effective after a person contracts the virus. The ministry made its announcement after reports that customers are rushing to stock up on Tamiflu and similar medications.

“Tamiflu is not a preventive medicine, it is a curative tablet that is given when the patient shows symptoms of the disease,” Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Khalid Al-Mirghalani told Arab news yesterday. According to pharmacists in Jeddah, Tamiflu is flying off the shelves. “Demand has gone up dramatically,” said pharmacist Mohammed Farooq, the manager of Family Pharmacy in Jeddah. “More and more people are asking for the drug by name. I don’t remember anyone asking for Tamiflu by name before the H1N1 first appeared.”

Farooq said the sale of the medicine that is often mentioned in the media, when it comes to H1N1-related cases, has risen in his store by about 700 percent. Farooq said even though he can currently obtain only older packages of Tamiflu that will expire in four months, he is confidently stocking his shelves with the medication, “something I usually would not do in normal cases.”

“Tamiflu was a slow moving product,” said Mohammed Sayed, a pharmacist for Oxygen Super Pharmacy. “We made a new order last week, double the previous order.” Sayed said he thinks consumers have been influenced by references to the drug in relation to the H1N1 virus.

“Most of consumers’ awareness of the product has come from watching swine flu news reports on television,” he said Omar, a 29-year-old businessman seen stocking up on the drug at a local pharmacy, said he’s buying enough of the medication for his entire family now out of concern that the price will go up later, “and there is the fear it will soon be out of stock in the market.” Al-Nahdi Pharmacy’s Mohammed Hamdi said yesterday he has only a few boxes of Tamiflu remaining and that the pharmacy is ordering more. He says his suppliers have not indicated that they would run out of the product.

The Ministry of Health said the Kingdom is not at risk of running out of flu medicines. Dr. Sami Abudawood of the Department of Health in Jeddah pointed out that the Ministry of Health would provide flu medication for free at public hospitals to anyone diagnosed with the flu as part of its measures to combat the H1N1 virus.

Meanwhile, Oman’s Health Ministry yesterday reported the Gulf nation’s first three cases of swine flu. Ministry adviser Jaafar bin Ali said yesterday the cases were diagnosed in three students who had been studying in the United States. He said their symptoms appeared after arriving in Oman on June 13. All have been sent home after treatment.

“The first time Tanisha had breathing problems and turned blue, we took her to NRS hospital, where doctors could not even diagnose the problem,” said Tanisha’s aunt Kalpana Sapui. Tests at the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, on the EM Bypass, showed that “a very large vessel from the aorta” was supplying blood to the baby’s underdeveloped right lung and there was a hole in her heart, which was also on the right side of her chest.

“Doctors in Calcutta were not confident of carrying out the surgeries. That’s when a paediatrician friend told me about Dr Balakrishnan of Malar Hospital in Chennai,” said Kalpana, who took to the girl to the southern city. After the defective lung was removed on April 16, when Tanisha was four months old, Balakrishnan, the director of cardiac sciences at the Chennai, used Viagra, a drug for erectile dysfunction, to reduce blood pressure in the baby’s other lung. Earlier, Tanisha underwent a cardiac catherisation, said the doctor.

“Tanisha is our only child. We had given up hope of her survival since the doctors here were in the dark. On the flight from Calcutta to Chennai, she stopped breathing four times and we had to revive her with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Like a miracle, she is absolutely fine after the surgeries,” said Subrata Saha, who works in a private firm, and Deepa, a homemaker.

The UPA govt. kept its promise made to the NGO and doctors, by issuing pictorial warnings notification for all the manufacturers of tobacco products. Lot of NGOs and hospitals has applauded this move, which will help to curb intake of tobacco related products.

There is enough awareness and publicity on this issue and even a survey can prove this amongst different socio-economical groups. The no-smoking initiative has lot of supporters from big business houses like Ambuja cements, Mahindra’s, etc to celebs like Vivek oberoi, etc NGOs like Salaam Bombay Foundation, Heales, Indian Dental Association, etc. Thinking this campaign from a Public Relations POV tells us how successful it is. The campaign is one of the most successful campaigns, much successful than any Tobacco manufacturing company’s cigarette campaign.

The campaign was able to lobby at policy makers level to create laws to curb tobacco intake by introducing no-smoking restaurants and no-smoking zones at public places. The campaign also informed all the stakeholders about the ill-effects of tobacco intake with the help of public service films, announcements, TVCs, etc.

· But has this campaign provided solutions for the tobacco addicts?

· If the smokers are doing something wrong, then what is the correct thing?

· How can they quit intake of tobacco?

· Any medicines available?

There are many such questions which the addict is searching for. The surveys often talks that out of every 10 smokers 7 die, 1 cigarette reduces 7 minutes of life, out of every 10 smokers 5 are looking for options to quit but the temptation is enough to push them back to smoking.

Has the campaign able to reduce smokers? The answer is a flat NO.

Except the fact that smokers need to quit and should overcome the temptation. Are their not enough anti-tobacco pills, nicotine gums, etc? The multi-nationals should enter and launch campaigns to promote de-addiction, should launch de-addiction centers for addicts who are looking forward for tobacco free life. Support groups for people looking to quit tobacco should be launched; this would help more people to quit. Just creating awareness and publicity doesn’t accomplish anything except PUBLIC RELATIONS for the company or NGO.

To cut the long story short, it is high time just creating awareness, start providing solutions and help to give smokers a SMOKE FREE LIFE..

The cause of heart ailments among female smokers is much higher because women have small arteries in comparison to men. Even the first heart attack in a women smoker can cause sudden death.” Roshan Roa, senior cardiologist, Metro Hospital and Heart institute, Noida, said: “The risk of heart complications among woman smokers is twice that of a normal smoker.

“If a women is smoking from a young age then she stands a greater risk of contracting heart problems. Female smokers who use oral contraceptives risk serious after-effects, including increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, such as blood clots, heart attacks and strokes,” Roa added. Sanjay Mittal, also from Metro Hospital, said during pregnancy smoking increases the chances of sudden infant death syndrome, learning disorders and attention deficit disorder in the child.

If a woman is in a child-bearing age and still smoking then it will have a bad effect on the child during pregnancy along with a greater risk of heart attack to the mother.

According to a new World Health Organisation (WHO) study, one in 10 women in urban India smoke or chew tobacco. The WHO report also estimates that seven percent of women in developing countries smoke compared with 48 percent men.

“Women who smoke are at a higher risk and face a number of health hazards such as heart disease and lung cancer,” said K.K. Aggarwal, president, Heart Care Foundation of India.

“Women who quit smoking have a 21 percent lower risk of dying from coronary heart disease within five years of quitting smoking. The risks of dying from other conditions also decline after quitting, although the period varies depending on the disease. For chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it may take up to 20 years,” he said.

According to a study, smoking leads to greater risk of developing cervix and vulvar cancers. Nineteen percent of cervical and 40 percent of vulvar cancer are caused by smoking.

Harmful affects of smoking for women:

- Smoking greatly increases risk of heart disease and stroke.

- Smoking causes interruptions in menstrual cycle and induces quicker menopause.

- Smoking causes pre-term delivery, low birth weight, miscarriage, and neonatal death.

- Children born to smoking mothers experience more colds, ear aches, respiratory problems, illnesses.

- Smoking affects fertility.

- Female smokers are more susceptible to osteoporosis.

- Smoking causes more breathing difficulties in women than in men.