Towards a policy for aging in India.

India has been engaged in developing the National Policy for elderly for the last two decades. The efforts to establish a policy began building on traditional values, a small number of pre-independence enactments. Lawgivers of India spoke of the rights of the elderly and the responsibility of the state towards them almost 2000 years ago. Additional factors such as culture, social norms, and influence of international organizations, particularly the Vienna Plan of Action, have been responsible for shaping the Policy. The Plan of Action agreed upon at the end of the Vienna meeting could not come into being due to several reasons such as the size of the country and its federal structure. This article takes an overview of the efforts made by the federal government and the NGOs to create a National Policy. The article describes the process by which the National Policy came into being and provides an overview and critique of the present Policy. The author makes a summary of the major areas of action suggested by the Policy, the strategies designed, and the implementation roles of different Ministries. The author describes the steps taken since 1999 and provides the concluding remarks.

Eliminating leprosy as a public health problem--is the optimism justified?

Systematic use of multidrug therapy has proved to be so effective that leprosy can be eliminated as a public health problem by the end of the century. However, because of the long incubation period of this disease, together with the time-lag in case detection, the factors involved in achieving and sustaining its elimination have to be very carefully defined.

Functional responses of the rat isolated seminal vesicle to electrical field stimulation: a pharmacological analysis.

1. Electrical field stimulation (EFS) of the rat isolated seminal vesicle elicited frequency-dependent and tetrodotoxin sensitive contractions which were unaltered by hexamethonium or mecamylamine. 2. Prazosin alone was not sufficient to abolish these responses, but a combination of atropine and prazosin was fully effective, indicating involvement of both noradrenergic and cholinergic mechanisms. 3. Responses were predominantly cholinergic (blocked by atropine, potentiated by ecothiopate but not significantly altered by prazosin or guanethidine) at 1-8 Hz but became increasingly noradrenergic (blocked by prazosin or guanethidine but relatively unaltered by atropine or ecothiopate) with increasing frequencies of stimulation. 4. Electrical field stimulation of seminal vesicles removed from reserpine or 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-pretreated rats produced contractions that were clearly cholinergic in nature. 5. After exposing the seminal vesicles to guanethidine, or after pretreatment of rats with 6-OHDA, responses to EFS remained, indicating that activation of discrete cholinergic and noradrenergic innervations seem to underlie the contractile responses observed. 6. Yohimbine and prazosin potentiated the predominantly cholinergic responses at 1, 2 and 4 Hz in tissues from untreated rats, but not in those from animals pretreated with reserpine or 6-OHDA, indicating the possibility of an interaction between the two innervations. 7. No inhibitory responses to EFS could be demonstrated in tissues precontracted with KCl in the presence of a combination of atropine and prazosin suggesting the absence of a nonadrenergic, noncholinergic inhibitory innervation.

Girl child: her rights and law.

PIP: This article points out the disparity between India's laws to protect female children and their actual living conditions. It is asserted that the role of women needs to be strengthened and that equal rights are executed to the advantage of children. Equality must come at the very beginning of life. Girl children need access to health, nutrition, education, and other basic services. In India, girls are guaranteed an equal right to education, but fewer girls are enrolled in primary school, and very few girls go on to secondary schools. There is no enforcement of compulsory laws, which particularly disadvantage girls from poor families. Girls marry below the legal minimum age. Early childbearing shortens women's life expectancy and adversely affects their health, nutrition, education, and employment opportunities. Prevention of early child marriage should be strictly enforced. Amniocentesis is performed in order to determine the sex of the child and abort female fetuses. The Juvenile Justice Act of 1986 includes special provisions for the protection, treatment, and rehabilitation of girls under 18 years old and of boys younger than 16. This act protects girls trapped in brothels for child prostitution and protects any person engaged in an immoral, drunken, or depraved life. Juvenile Welfare Boards address the problem of neglected girls and offer special protective homes and supervision by probation officers. The act needs to strengthen noninstitutional services, such as sponsorship, family assistance, foster care, and adoption. Girl children grow to womanhood. Effective social development in childhood reaps rewards in adulthood.^ieng

Toward productive & participatory aging in India.

The programs that address the issues of the elderly in India have changed their format. From a program of doles to the destitute elderly, the country now looks to programs of empowerment to enable the elderly to be active participants in the process of development.

Pharmacological characterization of the postjunctional alpha-adrenoceptors of the rat isolated seminal vesicle.

In an attempt to define the pharmacological characteristics of the postjunctional alpha-adrenoceptors of the rat seminal vesicle, responses to certain phenylethanolamine and imidazoline agonists were investigated, in vitro, under experimental conditions outlined by Furchgott (1972), using alpha 1-selective, non-selective and alpha 2-selective adrenoceptor antagonists. Adrenaline (ADR), noradrenaline (NA) and phenylephrine (PE) produced concentration-dependent contractions. In many experiments the concentration-response (C-R) curves had a distinct "shoulder" at the level of 60-80% of the maximum response (Emax), a situation reminiscent of the rat anococcygeus muscle and the rat basilar artery. The relative potencies of ADR:NA:PE, derived from their EC50 values, were 4.07:1:0.26. In contrast clonidine, oxymetazoline and naphazoline failed to contract the tissue even in concentrations up to 1 X 10(-3) M. In fact the imidazoline derivatives prevented responses to the phenylethanolamines. The antagonist action of clonidine, against phenylephrine, was studied in detail. Prazosin, phentolamine, yohimbine, corynanthine and clonidine all caused a rightward displacement of the C-R curves for NA without depressing Emax. The Arunlakshana and Schild plots of the data were linear and had slopes not significantly different from unity. The pA2 estimates obtained were 9.17 (9.13-9.21) for prazosin, 8.58 (8.07-9.09) for phentolamine, 6.70 (6.44-6.98) for yohimbine and 7.05 (6.81-7.30) for corynanthine. Clonidine had a pA2 value of 6.60 (6.55-6.67) against phenylephrine. On the basis of results obtained with antagonists, the postjunctional alpha-adrenoceptors of the rat seminal vesicle could be firmly placed in the gross category of "alpha 1".(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Pharmacological evaluation of the isolated rat seminal vesicle preparation.

A modification of the rat isolated seminal vesicle preparation is described, emphasizing the necessity to use younger animals (40-50 days old and weighing between 125 and 150 g) and to expel thoroughly all vesicular contents. Under the experimental conditions used (tissues suspended under a resting tension of 350 mg in a continuous flow of a modified Krebs solution run at the rate of 15 ml/min, maintained at 32 degrees C, and bubbled with 5% CO2 in O2), the preparation was quite sensitive, but only to a few selected agonists, and remained viable for over 4-6 hr. Adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, and acetylcholine all produced concentration-dependent and reproducible contractions. However, histaminergic, serotoninergic, purinergic, and opioid agonists were inactive as were prostaglandins of the E and F series and the polypeptides angiotensin, vasopressin, and oxytocin. In general, the tissue was rather insensitive to relaxant drugs, with only papaverine and sodium nitrite producing some relaxation in tissues previously contracted by carbachol. Advantages of the preparation include marked responsiveness, but only to a few selected agonists, and suitability for use as a paired tissue. It is suggested that employed under suitable experimental conditions, the preparation deserves a more frequent consideration for use during pharmacological investigations concerned with postsynaptic aspects of noradrenergic or cholinergic transmission.

Ossification of spinal arachnoid with unrelated syringomyelia. Case report.

A case demonstrating a combination of ossified spinal arachnoid and syringomyelia is reported. A plea is made for denoting the condition as "ossification of the spinal arachnoid" rather than "spinal arachnoiditis ossificans".