Every May for the past three years I've driven to Brimfield, Massachusetts to attend the largest antiques show in the country where vendors display their wares on fields that stretch a mile long. You'll find everything from furniture to novelties. I've been fortunate enough to attend with some fabulous designers and interior decorators that I have come to call good friends over the past few years. For the past 3 years I joined the Brimfield VIP event that was the brainchild of Gretchen Aubuchon, and sponsored by Aubuchon Hardware and Benjamin Moore paints. This year Rue La La and Robert Allen Design partnered up as well. We had a large and lovely tent to return to, where we could give our tired tootsies a rest, grab a cold beverage provided by Polar Beverages and recharge ourselves and our batteries. I couldn't imagine coming to Brimfield without this gem of a home base!
I'm doing something I've never done before - blogging from my phone! I've downloaded the images (there are many more on my camera!) to share with you all.?
My photographic eye always has such fun at Brimfield. I want to personally thank the folks at Benjamin Moore - and give a big shout out to my new friend Ben - for giving me a ticket to the VIP event. It was truly appreciated and I will be forever grateful!?
I'd been eyeing these for a couple of years now and last year I really regretted not getting one...?
I wasn't going to make that mistake again. So I gave myself an early Birthday present! Happy Birthday to Me!
There were so many wonderful, Nauti items!
and colors and shapes and patterns everywhere!
old bakelite... lots of it!
lots of signage...
Everything for every hobby...
Collectibles galore!
fabulous, whimsical furniture...
Our tent to rest our weary feet! The Cocktail Whisperer, Warren Bowbrow was there to quench everyone's thirst... The tent and bar area was designed by the talented Shane Inman of Shane Inman?Interiors... Word on the street was that he built the bar strong enough for yours truly to get up and dance on it!?
Below is my "creative shot" of Shane's rope chandelier that my friend Megan appropriately dubbed the "Shanedlier!"
My favorite little treat ever... thanks to Rue La La! (Shh, don't tell anyone but a few of these little jars made their way home with me!)
A beautiful dinner table with goodies provided by Benjamin Moore and Rue La La
My good friend and etiquette expert, Mindy Lockhart with her beyond adorable daughter (who was as polite as polite could be!)
I have about a million more pictures to upload but I have to hit the hay... I am off to New York City in the morning to take part in BlogFest, sponsored by Kravet Fabrics and Furnishings. As most of you know there was a terrible train collision just a town away from me on Friday evening and as a result train service is going to be a mess. There are going to be 50,000 displaced commuters, and me. At this point (9:15 pm) I am not entirely sure which station I will be leaving from or where I will be parking. I plan on being out the door by 6:00 to get to my event by 9:00. Trains are running sporadically and will be over crowded. But I shall persevere and ride the storm! (Do wish me luck please!)
The chief executive and president of the Associated Press said the Justice Department's investigation and the seizure of the news agency's phone records are having a negative impact on news gathering.
By Alina Selyukh,?Reuters / May 19, 2013
Gary Pruitt, the President and CEO of the Associated Press, discusses the leak investigation that led to his reporters' phone records being subpoenaed by the Justice Department on CBS's "Face the Nation" in Washington Sunday.
Chris Usher/CBS/AP
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The Justice Department's seizure of phone records for journalists at?the Associated Press?is hurting the agency's ability to gather news, the wire service's Chief Executive and President?Gary Pruitt?said on Sunday.
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"Officials that would normally talk to us and people we talk to in the normal course of news gathering are already saying to us that they're a little reluctant to talk to us," Pruitt said on CBS's "Face The Nation" program. "They fear that they will be monitored by the government."
The Justice Department told the AP on May 10 that it had earlier seized records of more than 20 of its phone lines for April and May 2012. The seizure was part of an investigation of media leaks about a foiled terrorism plot.
"Approximately a hundred journalists use these telephone lines as part of news gathering," Pruitt said. "And over the course of the two months of the records that they swept up, thousands upon thousands of news-gathering calls were made."
The?White House?has said that President?Barack Obama?learned about the Justice Department's record seizure from press reports and had no prior knowledge of the action.?Obama's administration?is fielding concerns on several incidents that raise questions about its transparency.
Pruitt said the Justice Department claimed an exception to its own rules that required them to notify the AP of such a record seizure by saying that such a disclosure would have posed a substantial threat to the investigation.
"But they have not explained why it would and we can't understand why it would," Pruitt said. "We never even had possession of these records, they were in the possession of our telephone service company and they couldn't be tampered with."
Government officials have told Reuters that the AP phone records were just one element in an ongoing sweeping U.S. government investigation into media leaks about a?Yemen-based plot to bomb a U.S. airliner, prompted by a May 7, 2012 AP story about the operation to foil the plot.
"We don't question their right to conduct these sort of investigations," Pruitt said. "We think they went about it the wrong way, so sweeping, so secretively, so abusively and harassingly."
Pruitt said the AP would have sought to narrow the scope of the record seizure through courts had it been notified, instead of "the Justice Department acting on its own, being the judge, jury and executioner, in secret."
Reuters was one of nearly 50 news organizations that signed a letter to Attorney General?Eric Holder?complaining about the AP phone record seizures.
The historic NASA launch pad from where astronauts blasted off for the moon and space shuttles departed for Earth orbit is now in need of a new rocket to launch.
This week, NASA is expected to begin soliciting proposals for the commercial use of Launch Pad 39A at the space agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Use of the pad by private industry is hoped to maintain the historic launch complex and encourage commercial space activities along Florida's Space Coast.
"We remain committed to right-sizing our portfolio by reducing the number of facilities that are underused, duplicative, or not required to support the Space Launch System and Orion," Kennedy Center Director Bob Cabana said in a statement, referring to NASA's next-generation heavy-lift booster and its crewed spacecraft. [Photos: NASA's Giant Rocket for Deep Space Flights]
"Launch Complex 39A is not required to support our [planned] asteroid retrieval mission or our eventual missions to Mars," Cabana added. "It's in the agency's and our nation's best interest in meeting our commitment and direction to enable commercial space operations and allow the aerospace industry to operate and maintain the pad and related facilities."
Since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, NASA has turned to commercial space companies to provide launch services. Two companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, were awarded contracts to bring cargo to the International Space Station, while SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp. are developing crewed spacecraft in a bid to launch NASA astronauts to the orbiting laboratory.
SpaceX has said in the past that it has considered using NASA's launch facilities in place of, or in addition to, its current pad leased from the United States Air Force at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Other companies, such as Alliant Techsystems (ATK), might benefit from the use of the legacy hardware given that its Liberty rocket shares a heritage with the space shuttle's boosters.
Launch Pad 39A was one of two large launch complexes built in the 1960s to support the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket launches to the moon and Saturn IB flights to the Skylab space station. Both pads were later modified for the space shuttle launches to deploy and service satellites and build the International Space Station.
Pad 39A's twin, Pad 39B, was stripped of its iconic launch support towers in 2011 to enable its use for possible future commercial and government launch vehicles. Launch Pad 39A, which supported 92 launches since November 1967 ? 12 Saturn V rockets and 80 shuttles ? was initially set to support the new Space Launch System.
Budget constraints however, caused NASA to consolidate its future launch pad needs at Pad 39B, leaving Pad 39A without a purpose. And without the funding to modify or maintain it, Cabana said earlier this year that the agency has no choice but to abandon Pad 39A in place unless a commercial user could be identified.
According to the space agency's own assessments, Pad 39A could still serve as a platform for a private company's launch activities. However, this would require the company to take over financial and technical responsibility of the complex's operations and management.
According to a synopsis released by the space agency on Friday (May 17), NASA is contemplating entering into one or more lease agreements for Pad 39A for a minimum of five years. Other terms, including longer-term agreements and different contractual relationships, can be suggested, the agency's synopsis states.
To maximize the use of Launch Pad 39A and keep its gantries and other infrastructure from deteriorating due to a lack of regular maintenance, NASA said it will expedite its process, with submissions due within 30 days of the announcement accepting proposals.
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Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
A team of University of Pennsylvania engineers has used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action, opening the door to more sensitive infrared cameras and more compact chemical-analysis techniques.
The research was conducted by assistant professor Ertugrul Cubukcu and postdoctoral researcher Fei Yi, along with graduate students Hai Zhu and Jason C. Reed, all of the Department of Material Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It was published in the journal Nano Letters.
Detecting light in the mid-infrared range is important for applications like night-vision cameras, but it can also be used to do spectroscopy, a technique that involves scattering light over a substance to infer its chemical composition. Existing infrared detectors use cryogenically cooled semiconductors, or thermal detectors known as microbolometers, in which changes in electrical resistance can be correlated to temperatures. These techniques have their own advantages, but both need expensive, bulky equipment to be sensitive enough for spectroscopy applications.
"We set out to make an optomechanical thermal infrared detector," Cubukcu said. "Rather than changes in resistance, our detector works by connecting mechanical motion to changes in temperature."
The advantage to this approach is that it could reduce the footprint of an infrared sensing device to something that would fit on a disposable silicon chip. The researchers fabricated such a device in their study.
At the core of the device is a nanoscale structure about a tenth of a millimeter wide and five times as long made of a layer of gold bonded to a layer of silicon nitride. The researchers chose these materials because of their different thermal expansion coefficients, a parameter that determines how much a material will expand when heated. Because metals will naturally convert some energy from infrared light into heat, researchers can connect the amount the material expands to the amount of infrared light hitting it.
"A single layer would expand laterally, but our two layers are constrained because they're attached to one another," Cubukcu said. "The only way they can expand is in the third dimension. In this case, that means bending toward the gold side, since gold has the higher thermal expansion coefficient and will expand more."
To measure this movement, the researchers used a fiber interferometer. A fiber optic cable pointed upward at this system bounces light off the underside of the silicon nitride layer, enabling the researchers to determine how far the structure has bent upwards.
"We can tell how far the bottom layer has moved based on this reflected light," Cubukcu said. "We can even see displacements that are thousands of times smaller than a hydrogen atom."
Other researchers have developed optomechanical infrared sensors based on this principle, but their sensitivities have been comparatively low. The Penn team's device is an improvement in this regard due to the inclusion of "slot" nanoantennas, cavities that are etched into the gold layer at intervals that correspond to wavelengths of mid-infrared light.
"The infrared radiation is concentrated into the slots, so you don't need any additional material to make these antennas," Cubukcu said. "We take the same exact platform and, by patterning it with these nanoscale antennas, the conversion efficiency of the detector improves 10 times."
The inclusion of nanoantennas provides the device with an additional advantage: the ability to tailor which type of light it is sensitive to by etching a different pattern of slots on the surface.
"Other techniques can only work at the maximum absorption determined by the material itself," Yi said. "Our antennas can be engineered to absorb at any wavelength."
While only a proof-of-concept at this stage, future research will demonstrate the device's capabilities as a low-cost way of analyzing individual proteins and gas molecules.
###
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center and the Penn Regional Nanotechnology Facility.
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Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
A team of University of Pennsylvania engineers has used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action, opening the door to more sensitive infrared cameras and more compact chemical-analysis techniques.
The research was conducted by assistant professor Ertugrul Cubukcu and postdoctoral researcher Fei Yi, along with graduate students Hai Zhu and Jason C. Reed, all of the Department of Material Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It was published in the journal Nano Letters.
Detecting light in the mid-infrared range is important for applications like night-vision cameras, but it can also be used to do spectroscopy, a technique that involves scattering light over a substance to infer its chemical composition. Existing infrared detectors use cryogenically cooled semiconductors, or thermal detectors known as microbolometers, in which changes in electrical resistance can be correlated to temperatures. These techniques have their own advantages, but both need expensive, bulky equipment to be sensitive enough for spectroscopy applications.
"We set out to make an optomechanical thermal infrared detector," Cubukcu said. "Rather than changes in resistance, our detector works by connecting mechanical motion to changes in temperature."
The advantage to this approach is that it could reduce the footprint of an infrared sensing device to something that would fit on a disposable silicon chip. The researchers fabricated such a device in their study.
At the core of the device is a nanoscale structure about a tenth of a millimeter wide and five times as long made of a layer of gold bonded to a layer of silicon nitride. The researchers chose these materials because of their different thermal expansion coefficients, a parameter that determines how much a material will expand when heated. Because metals will naturally convert some energy from infrared light into heat, researchers can connect the amount the material expands to the amount of infrared light hitting it.
"A single layer would expand laterally, but our two layers are constrained because they're attached to one another," Cubukcu said. "The only way they can expand is in the third dimension. In this case, that means bending toward the gold side, since gold has the higher thermal expansion coefficient and will expand more."
To measure this movement, the researchers used a fiber interferometer. A fiber optic cable pointed upward at this system bounces light off the underside of the silicon nitride layer, enabling the researchers to determine how far the structure has bent upwards.
"We can tell how far the bottom layer has moved based on this reflected light," Cubukcu said. "We can even see displacements that are thousands of times smaller than a hydrogen atom."
Other researchers have developed optomechanical infrared sensors based on this principle, but their sensitivities have been comparatively low. The Penn team's device is an improvement in this regard due to the inclusion of "slot" nanoantennas, cavities that are etched into the gold layer at intervals that correspond to wavelengths of mid-infrared light.
"The infrared radiation is concentrated into the slots, so you don't need any additional material to make these antennas," Cubukcu said. "We take the same exact platform and, by patterning it with these nanoscale antennas, the conversion efficiency of the detector improves 10 times."
The inclusion of nanoantennas provides the device with an additional advantage: the ability to tailor which type of light it is sensitive to by etching a different pattern of slots on the surface.
"Other techniques can only work at the maximum absorption determined by the material itself," Yi said. "Our antennas can be engineered to absorb at any wavelength."
While only a proof-of-concept at this stage, future research will demonstrate the device's capabilities as a low-cost way of analyzing individual proteins and gas molecules.
###
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center and the Penn Regional Nanotechnology Facility.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK ? James Levine rolled onto the Carnegie Hall stage in his black motorized wheelchair and into a 6-by-6-foot mechanical podium constructed by the Metropolitan Opera.
Belted into the wheelchair, Levine and two aides waited while the podium hoisted him about 3 feet in the air and its interior rotated 180 degrees to leave him facing the audience. Given a 1-minute standing ovation, he blew a kiss to the crowd in the sold-out 2,804-seat auditorium, raised his fists in triumph and tapped his heart.
And then it was to business. After an absence of more than two years caused by a fall that left him partially paralyzed, the Met's music director had returned.
Looking a bit like a starship captain in the commander's chair, Levine conducted the prelude to Wagner's "Lohengrin," Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with Evgeny Kissin and Schubert's Symphony No. 9 (Great) on Sunday afternoon, the first step toward his return the Met next fall. He received a 71/2-minute standing ovation at the end.
Levine, who turns 70 on June 23, has transformed the Met since his debut in 1971 and joined Leonard Bernstein as the most acclaimed American conductors. He has been the leading force at the Met for four decades as chief conductor (1973-76), music director (1976-86 and 2004-present) and artistic director (1986-2004).
But Levine's health began to deteriorate. He was afflicted with aggravated Parkinsonism ? a relatively benign form of Parkinson's disease ? starting in 1994. He tore a rotator cuff in March 2006 when he tripped and fell on the stage of Boston's Symphony Hall during ovations, and his right kidney was removed in July 2008 because of a malignant tumor. Then he had surgery in 2009 to repair a herniated disk in his back and a second back operation in 2010.
By then he was conducting from a chair and by 2011 he took his bows from the podium in the Met's orchestra pit rather than walk on stage. He resigned as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position he had held since 2004, and canceled his appearances on a Met tour of Japan that was to celebrate his 40th anniversary with the company.
Two more back surgeries followed in May and July 2011 and the next month he fell and damaged a vertebrae, leaving him with no feeling in his legs. He canceled his entire 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons at the Met, leaving the company to scramble for fill-in conductors for his many assignments.
With intensive therapy, he regained feeling in his legs and in recent months has started to walk. He said doctors are hopeful for a complete recovery at some point. But for now, he conducts from the wheelchair.
Wearing a black shirt ? the outfit he switched to several years ago ? rather than white-tie-and-tails, he seemed to have freer movement than he did before the 2011 surgeries. His upper body was strong, and the gestures he made with his left hand to increase and decrease the orchestra's level and shape its sound were the same as the Levine of old.
His return program opened with a rendition of the "Lohengrin" prelude notable for the shimmering spaciousness of the strings in A-major. Before Sunday, his last performance had been a televised "Die Walkuere" on May 14, 2014, and his illness created a hole in the company's Ring Cycles last spring and this that Fabio Luisi never quite filled.
Levine's Wagner has texture and force, an ebb and flow that creates great import, yet a lightness that lets all the colors shine. In all of nine minutes, he showed what the Met had been missing.
He followed with frothy Beethoven accompanying Kissim, an energetic rendering of the G Major that never sounded rushed. The andante con moto was ominous and the closing rondo galloping. Kissim added a fun encore of Beethoven's "Rage Over a Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice."
Levine's Schubert, which followed intermission, was grand and lavish with an arch that intensified toward the conclusion. By the final ovations, Levine looked overjoyed.
He is scheduled for three productions at the Met next season: revivals of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" starting Sept. 24 and Berg's "Wozzeck" beginning March 6, and a new-to-the-Met staging of Verdi's "Falstaff" opening Dec. 6. He also will conduct the Met Orchestra's three Carnegie concerts.
Levine says if all goes well, he will increase his schedule in 2014-15. Many a conductor's best work took place after age 70. After Sunday's performance, Levine can start looking forward to his renaissance years.
Demonstrators are upset with efforts by Kenya's lawmakers to give themselves a pay raise.
By Fredrick Nzwili,?Correspondent / May 14, 2013
Kenyan demonstrators, some chained to each other, gather near the gate of parliament in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday. Police fired tear-gas, water cannons and swung their batons at protesters gathered outside Kenya?s parliament building to pile pressure on the country's legislators to drop demands for a salary increment.
Sayyid Azim/AP
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Kenyan police?on Tuesday?fired teargas and used water cannons to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who had camped outside Parliament protesting an attempt by lawmakers to increase their own pay.
Skip to next paragraph Fredrick Nzwili
East Africa Correspondent
Fredrick Nzwili is a Kenya-based journalist with 15 years experience in writing for newspapers, international magazines, and international news organizations from Africa. Between 2003 and 2010, he covered the religious dimension of news across the continent. He has also traveled to several African countries on assignments covering peace and conflict, humanitarian work, environment, and interfaith relations and dialogue, among other subjects.?
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The protests began with a march through Nairobi's streets, with demonstrators chanting and carrying placards critical of Members of Parliament (MPs). Protesters had planned to then go inside and "Occupy Parliament," but that proved difficult after police in riot gear surrounded the building.
The police made 15 arrests, but struggled to control the agitated crowd as well as a drove of pigs ??bearing the inscriptions "MPigs" ? which demonstrators brought to the assembly's entrance. They also covered the ground with pig blood, which the pigs mingled in.
?We want to see resources being directed to service delivery, not meeting the wage bill? of lawmakers, says Morris Odhiambo, the director of the Centre for Law Research International.
According to Mr. Odhiambo, many Kenyans were living in deplorable conditions, because their tax money has either been stolen or paid to undeserving people. Nurses and teachers, who have sought pay increases, have not received serious attention from the government, he says. ?The attempt by MPs to increase their salary emphasizes the highest level of impunity.?
Kenya recently decreased the legislators? annual earnings from $120,000 to $75,000 to rein in the burgeoning salary expenses, following the creation of new state offices by a new constitution. Some analysts were already warning government operations may become unsustainable unless the government controls salaries of state officers.
Disregarding the developments, MPs have demanded an upward adjustment of the salary from the current $6,250 back to $10,000 per month, demands that have angered the public.
?If they can?t take the pay, they should resign. We want to rein in their greed. They have not done any work and we are disappointed they are seeking a pay raise even before they work,? says Mr. Simon Muoki, a young environmental rights campaigner.
?This has been our country?s problem for the last 50 years. MPs have forced decisions ? including their pay ??in disregard of the feelings of those who elect them,? says Jedida Wanjiru, an octogenarian at the demonstrations.
For the past month, the lawmakers have arm-twisted the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), a government body that?s sets salaries of all state officers. With MPs threatening to disband it, the SRC has stuck to its guns.
On Monday?the commission said it will not increase the salary even with threats and intimidation. Sarah Serem, SRC?s chairperson said the commission?s concern was how to reduce the wage bill so that the savings can be used for development work. She said Kenya's total revenue was $11.8 billion, but the country spends $5.7 billion on salaries.
?This amount is not only huge, but it is unaffordable and unsustainable. It stands in the way of the country?s development agenda,? Ms. Serem told a news conference in Nairobi.
?.as Zambia is rated highest cancer mortality in world-over NEW DEHLI ? India has highest number of women dying from cervical cancer and Zambia has highest mortality rate. Australia provides a global model for dramatically preventing cervical cancer. More women die of cervical cancer in India than anywhere in the world. India along with China, Brazil, Bangladesh and Nigeria represent over 50 percent of the global burden of cervical cancer deaths. However, African countries are struggling to deal with cervical cancer too according to the new Cervical Cancer Crisis Card, which ranks countries from across the world based on the number of deaths from cervical cancer and the overall mortality rate. The Crisis Card is available on the Cervical Cancer Free Coalition website and launched globally to mark International Mother?s Day last Sunday. Cervical cancer kills an estimated 275,000 women every year and 500,000 new cases are reported worldwide. This entirely preventable disease is the second largest cancer killer of women in low and middle-income countries. According to the Crisis Card, Zambia has the highest mortality rate for cervical cancer. ?It is shocking that Zambia is ranked number 1 on the Cervical Cancer Crisis Card for mortality rate,? said Zambia?s First Lady Christine Kaseba. ?We can change this by making life saving vaccines available that almost entirely prevent the disease. We have the tools and technologies, this mother?s day we must stop talking and act to save women?s lives.? However, there are reasons for hope too. According to the Crisis Card, Australia has the lowest cervical cancer mortality rate, which is due to the successful rollout of a comprehensive package of HPV vaccines, treatment and prevention. According to the Government of Australia, there has also been a decline in genital warts and cervical abnormalities among young women since the introduction of the HPV vaccine in Australia. Jennifer Smith, Executive Director of the Cervical Cancer Free Coalition said: ?Cervical cancer is a preventable cancer, yet we are still seeing so many deaths around the world. At Cervical Cancer Free Coalition we are working towards building networks across the globe to help support our common goal of a world free of cervical cancer. Together we can dramatically reduce this disease through vaccination, screening and education.? The startling disparities between women in the developed and developing world are personified by cervical cancer.? A woman in Zambia is 25 times more likely to die from cervical cancer than a woman in Australia and India has 750 times more deaths than Norway. This level of inequity is also reflected across gender indicators with girls less likely to attend school but more likely to be malnourished and married as a child. Unless life-saving HPV vaccines are prioritised by decision makers this inequity will remain. Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance said ?2013 is the beginning of a dramatic shift in women?s health. A new low price for the HPV vaccine has been negotiated by GAVI for countries eligible for support, opening the door for millions of girls in the world?s poorest countries to be protected against one of the leading cancer killers of women. Ghana will be one of the first African countries to receive HPV vaccines this year with GAVI support.? Coming in the same month as the global Women Deliver 2013 conference that will have a focus on gender and health equity in terms of the post-2015 framework (the follow framework to the Millennium Development Goals), the report is a timely reminder of the challenges facing women, especially in the low to middle income countries. By prioritising women?s health in the next developmental framework, world leaders would show that they?re serious about challenging inequity and building sustainable societies where universal rights are guaranteed for all. ?By investing in women, nations are investing in their future prosperity. If women are educated, are represented politically and have access to good quality health services, then they and their children are much more likely to stay healthy and contribute positively to their nation,? said Sania Nishtar, Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Information Technology, Education and Training in the Government of Pakistan. ?Huge progress has been made across the world, but much more can be done to save and improve millions of women?s lives, particularly those from the poorest and most marginalised communities.? Cervical cancer is a taboo issue in many places as it is linked to sexual reproduction and cancer. Unless women?s groups and civil society join together to lead movements that break through stigma, patriarchy and other societal barriers, we will continue to see large numbers of deaths and high mortality rates. Projections show that by 2030, almost half a million women will die of cervical cancer, with over 98 percent of these deaths expected to occur in low and middle-income countries. The time to act is now. The crisis card also calls for: The rollout of a comprehensive approach to cervical cancer that includes the aggressive rollout of HPV vaccines that prevent disease and for the scaling up of screening and treatment options. Women to be encouraged to visit their health provider for early screening of precancers using either the pap smear (colposcopy), visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) and HPV testing to help diagnose precancerous cells. Treatment of precancers is advancing, which provides hope to the hundreds of thousands of women who missed out on the vaccine. Health systems need to be strengthened so that all women who need access to treatment can access affordable, quality care. ? CERVICAL CANCER FREE COALITION.
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Public release date: 20-May-2013
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?.as Zambia is rated highest cancer mortality in world-over