By: Nick Webster Hospitals and clinics are bracing themselves for the onset of flu season but are not expecting an increase in the number of cases seen last winter. Advice is being offered by the Ministry of Health and Prevention to strengthen influenza response capacities. That includes offering vaccines to those most at risk and improving diagnostics and disease surveillance to help monitor potential outbreaks. Common symptoms include a fever with a rise in body temperature, a dry cough, body aches and sometimes vomiting and diarrhoea, especially in children. “Those at the extremes of age, both very young and old are most at risk from influenza,” said Dr.Magdi Mohamed, a consultant in emergency medicine at Burjeel Hospital. “Anyone with any kind of immune deficiency or those with diabetes or HIV are also more at risk. “Prevention is always better than cure, so they should avoid contact with sick people.…

By: Robert Preidt, HealthDay Reporter Most American women would prefer to get a mammogram to screen for breast cancer every year rather than every two years, a new study finds. Currently, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that women at average risk for breast cancer be screened every two years, beginning at age 50. The recommendation is based in part on potential harms associated with screening mammography. Those include diagnosis and treatment of noninvasive and invasive breast cancers that would not have posed a threat to a woman’s health, as well as unneeded biopsies and the anxiety caused by false-positive results. However, other experts believe that the benefits of early breast cancer detection far outweigh the potential harms. To get women’s views, the researchers surveyed 731 women, 59 years old on average, who had screening and diagnostic mammograms done at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia between December 2016…

By Patrick Egwu When a cluster of villages in Senegal publicly announced their decision to end the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in 2008, many thought it was just a theoretical gesture. Today, the country stands as an example of how to eradicate genital cutting. In 2008, to the admiration of global health observers, more than 5 000 communities in Senegal publicly declared that they were abandoning female genital mutilation (FGM), an age-old practice in that West African country. Since then, awareness has grown and a critical mass has been building, spreading through the very ties of family and ethnicity that used to entrench it. Thousands of villages have joined the movement, including more than 2,000 communities last year. In many ethnic groups across the continent, the practice, once seen as an immutable part of a girl’s life, is ebbing, though nowhere at the pace or with…

By: Fiachra GIBBONS Japan and China have more of the world’s best restaurants than anywhere else, according to the La Liste ranking, which will be published next week. Although the French-based list will declare Guy Savoy’s flagship Paris riverside restaurant the best in the world for the second year running — and French cooking dominates the top 100 — the big trend is the climb of Chinese haute cuisine. “The rise and rise of China is the big story,” said JorgZipprick, who crunched the numbers for the “guide of guides”, which was set up as a “more scientific and reliable” rival three years ago to the British-based 50 Best Restaurants. Japan still tops the country table with 138 restaurants in the top 1,000 of the French classification — which aggregates reviews from guides, newspapers, and websites including TripAdvisor — but China is closing the gap fast with 123. “Up…