Urban News

Source : The Hindu Date : 12.06.2009

Coimbatore Corporation stops unauthorised construction in school

Special Correspondent

Photo: M. Periasamy

ENFORCEMENT: Workers of the Coimbatore Corporation removing construction materials at the C.S.I. Primary School as part of a drive to halt unauthorised constructions. —

COIMBATORE: Town Planning officials of the Coimbatore Corporation stopped on Thursday the construction of an structure in a school on Bharathiar Road at Pappanaickenpalayam in the city. Students of the school staged a road blockade to protest against the action.

Official sources said the civic body had served three notices to the school and the Town Planning officials had also visited it to ask the authorities to stop the construction. When the school allegedly defied the orders, the Corporation officials went to the spot on Thursday, stopped the work and seized the materials being used for construction.

As students and parents protested the action, the Corporation officials told the school management to get the necessary approval from the civic body and continue with the construction. The protest was then called off. The officials also asked the management to give importance to the safety of the students while building new structures.

Corporation Commissioner Anshul Mishra wanted parents to check whether schools were safe for their children. He wanted the Town Planning Department in the Corporation to bestow special attention on building plans submitted by schools and ensure there was no undue delay in clearing these.

The Corporation would also explore whether stickers with the words “unauthorised building” could be pasted on structures that came up at schools without getting the mandatory plan approval. Parents could learn from these stickers that their children studied in schools that violated rules.

The Corporation would also seek criminal action against those who tried to prevent efforts from the Corporation to stop unauthorised constructions.

Source : The Hindu Date : 12.06.2009

“Urological disorders posing risk to quality of women’s life” Health & Lifestyle

M. Dinesh Varma

CHENNAI: The flip side to the emergence of a brave new generation of self-assured, confident and career-oriented modern woman is showing up in the clinical setting.

With the mean age of marriage and the birth of the first child delayed by a few years, as more women turn working professionals, a host of urological disorders are posing a risk to their quality of life.

This delay, coupled with changing lifestyles, stress and unhealthy diet is triggering a rash of urogynaecological diseases ranging from the stigmata-shrouded urinary and bowel incontinence to a life-threatening condition like breast cancer.

Doctors, who are worried that the well-deserved rise in social stature for women should come with health costs, recommend simple lifestyle modifications, balanced diet and pelvic floor exercises as preventive methods.

“With 50 per cent of women over the age of 35 suffering from some form of pelvic floor problem and the incidence of breast cancer doubling in two decades, there is an urgency to familiarise women on the ailments and their symptoms that most suffer in silence,” said Thankam Varma, Medical Director, Institute of Reproductive Medicine and Women’s Health at Madras Medical Mission.

MMM recently launched a Department of Urogynaecology and a breast clinic to exclusively cater to women suffering from these common disorders with the aim of catching disease at an early stage.

It is estimated that 3 out of 10 women with urinary problems have some form of urinary leak. When pioneering urogynecologist N. Rajamaheswari of the Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital led a survey of 1,062 outpatients (aged 20-70), the results had shown an alarmingly high prevalence of Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI).

Experts say that urinary disorders are triggered by physiological changes in a woman’s life that damage the pelvic floor.

Among women above the age of 40, hormonal flux and the laxity of tissues lead to prolapse of pelvic organs — a condition associated with symptoms such as dragging sensation, palpating a lump, difficulty in walking or sitting.

Bowel dysfunction presenting as incontinence or faecal urgency is another problem that most women are too embarrassed about to even confide with the family let alone a doctor.

“Today, the barrier in treating urogynaecological problems is the reluctance of women to seek medical help rather than a limitation of treatment options,” said A. Tamilselvi, consultant urogynaecologist.

Cancer profiles in urban settings too have changed over the years with breast cancer outstripping cervical cancer as the leading tormentor of women. Going by ICMR data, the incidence of breast cancer is 1 in 22 women in Mumbai and 1 in 29 women in Chennai.

“While the emerging scenario is bad enough what is worse is that 50 to 70 per cent of these cancers are diagnosed at Stage III or IV when the tumour would have spread to lymph nodes and distant sites,” says Suresh Anand, oncoplastic surgeon.

With stage presentation of breast cancer a determinant of survival years (9 out of 10 women survive by simply detecting the warning signs early), it is important for women above the age of 35 to undergo a mammogram.