|
|
|
MOSAIC: India’s drinking water problem
Inspiration behind Bond, dead A BRITISH war hero, said to have been the inspiration behind secret agent James Bond, has died aged 90, British newspapers reported Wednesday. Former Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job carried out a series of daring exploits behind enemy lines during the Second World War including some while serving under author Ian Fleming, who created the 007 character. Although he never claimed to be the real James Bond, Fleming had told him he was the model for the heroic spy, the Guardian newspaper said. Dalzel-Job’s real life adventures certainly read like a James Bond novel. In one of most daring exploits in 1940, he disobeyed orders to rescue all the women, children and elderly residents from the Norwegian town of Narvik in local boats just before it was destroyed in a German bombing raid. He only avoided a court martial after the King of Norway sent his personal thanks and awarded him the Knight’s Cross of St Olav. Later in the war he commanded a team in one Fleming’s undercover units which worked far ahead of allied lines in France and Germany. He recounted tales of his wartime achievements in his memoir From Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy. However, unlike the woman-chasing 007, Dalzel-Job returned to Norway after the war to marry a schoolgirl he had met there as a child. He even shunned the Bond films. “I prefer the quiet life now. When you have led such an exciting life you don’t need to see a fictional account of it,” the Guardian quoted him as saying. Curing blindness VISION 2020 — the Right to Sight, is a global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness states a recent issue of the British Medical Journal. Childhood blindness has a priority in this programme. Blind children have a lifetime of blindness ahead, which affects their opportunities for education, employment and earning potential. Early onset blindness adversely affects psychomotor, social and emotional development. The prevalence of blindness in children is 3/10,000 children in affluent societies to 15/10,000 in the poorest communities, and 75 per cent of the world’s blind children live in developing countries. Some 500,000 children become blind each year. Childhood blindness in the poor countries is due to vitamin A deficiency, harmful traditional eye remedies and cerebral malaria. In middle income countries, retinopathy of prematurity, hereditary retinal dystrophies, disorders of the central nervous system and congenital anamolies prevail in large numbers. Measles cause corneal blindness. Most of these causes are preventable. Vitamin A global initiative was launched in 1998 and now supplements are combined with immunization. Along with this promotion of breast feeding, home gardening to increase local production of food rich in vitamin A, diarrhoea control, nutrition education and intermittent high dose vitamin A supplementation, have been instituted. Excellent neonatal care can prevent premature babies and thus development of retinopathy of prematurity The control of blindness in children is complex. It not only requires sophisticated tertiary care centres but also community support. The challenges demand political commitment towards alleviation of poverty and development of effective and sustainable models. — Dr Fatema Jawad | ||
|
|
|
|
