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Behealthy : The UK government is facing calls to launch a  healthy eating  campaign to educate the nation on how food can boost the immune system during lockdown. On Thursday, a group of leading food policy experts including Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University of London, wrote a letter to the environment secretary and Public Health England’s chief executive, citing evidence that a healthy diet could help fight off infections. However, the letter states that this “vital” information is not being shared with the public. “In addition to current government measures, clear and well-informed public guidance is required from the government on what is nutritionally necessary and sufficient to maintain UK food security and nutritional appropriateness,” the letter reads. Meanwhile, the  World Health Organisation  (WHO) is also urging people to maintain a healthy lifestyle while on lockdown, saying it could boost their chances of a fast reco...

Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp said Wednesday that it would launch the WhatsApp  Coronavirus  Information Hub globally, in partnership with the World Health Organization, United Nations Children's Fund, and United Nations Development Programme, and a $1 million donation to the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The WhatsApp  Coronavirus  Information Hub will be available at whatsapp.com/ coronavirus  and provide simple, actionable guidance for health workers, educators, community leaders, nonprofits, local governments and local businesses that rely on WhatsApp to communicate. The site also offers general tips and resources for users around the world to reduce the spread of rumours and connect with accurate health information. “We know that our users are reaching out on WhatsApp more than ever at this time of crisis, whether it’s to friends and loved ones, doctors to patients, or teachers to students. We wanted to ...

The Fitbit on your wrist not only counts your steps and minutes of sleep, it can also help tell if you’re coming down with the flu — and warn health authorities to get ready to help. A study in the United States has found that heart rate and sleep data from wearable fitness tracker watches can predict and alert public health officials to real-time outbreaks of flu more accurately than current surveillance methods. The study used data from more than 47,000 Fitbit users in five US states. The results, published in The Lancet Digital Health journal, showed that by using Fitbit data, state-wide predictions of flu outbreaks were improved and accelerated. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 6,50,000 people worldwide die of respiratory diseases linked to seasonal flu each year. Traditional surveillance reporting takes up to three weeks, meaning response measures — such as deploying vaccines or anti-virals and advising patients to stay at home — ca...

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that it had for the first time approved a "biosimilar" medicine -- one derived from living sources rather than chemicals -- to make breast cancer treatment affordable to women globally. The trastuzumab drug has shown "high efficacy" in curing early stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, the WHO said in a statement. But the annual cost of the original drug is an average (of) $20,000, "a price that puts it out of reach of many women and healthcare systems in most countries," the statement added. However, the biosimilar version of trastuzumab is generally 65 per cent cheaper than the original. "With this WHO listing, and more products expected in the prequalification pipeline, prices should decrease even further," the WHO said. Read Complete Article