RE: Stampede near Indian temple leaves 91 dead, 100 injured

 News on Monday, 14 October 2013 in TODAY newspaper:

New Delhi – At least 91 people, including women and children, were killed and over 100 injured in a stampede near a temple in central India where about half a million devotees had converged for a Hindu festival. Rumors that a bridge they were crossing was about to collapse triggered panic, causing the worst tragedy in 2 years as many jumped into the river to their deaths.

About 25,000 were crossing the bridge at the time of the incident and they were on their way to the Ratangarh temple in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh, said Mr DK Arya, the state’s Deputy Inspector-General of Police. Television images showed bodies and clothes strewn on the bridge as relatives tried to identify the victims. 10 of the injured were in a serious condition, Mr Arya said, suggesting the death toll may climb. Police wielding sticks had charged the crowd in an effort to contain the panic, Mr Arya said. People retaliated by hurling stones at officers and one officer was badly injured.

Local media said some 500,000 people had gone to the remote temple to honor the Hindu Mother goddess Durga on the last day of the popular 10 day Navaratra festival. The state has ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident. Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the leader of ruling Congress Party, expressed “shock and deep anguish over the tragic incident”, according to a party statement. Stampedes during mass gatherings are common in the country with a population of more than 1.2 billion. Government data show about 102 people were killed previously in January 2011 same DejaVu at a Hindu shrine in the southern state of Kerala. A crowd surge at a railway station in northern India killed at least 36 people in February as Hindu devotees, drawn by one of the holiest days of the world’s largest religious gathering, rushed to board trains. AGENCIES 

From my point of view, i know that each any years goes by..there’s always people will be crashing and in a tragic accident that none will ever survive through this nightmare. As for what i know they will beg for mercy from their God/Goddess seeking for help to save them from this madness..and also because they had lost their family, friends or love ones. As if this keep going on nothing will change..if God/Goddess is not listening to their prayers then there be something wrong with it. It will be like there be Doomsday in their lives. But what i only hope that and what we could do for these people is that we pray for their safety and happiness and good health. I really hope the Heaven’s will guide and help them and forgive them too.. that’s all for today! Thank you for reading! 

 

 

RE: US shutdown slows or halts health, safety efforts

 WASHINGTON — The government shutdown has slowed or halted federal efforts to protect Americans’ health and safety, from probes into the cause of transportation and workplace accidents to tracking foodborne illness. The latest example: An outbreak of salmonella in chicken that has sickened people in 18 states.

The federal Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said yesterday (Oct 8) that it was recalling some of its furloughed staff to deal with the outbreak, which has sickened more than 270 people. Before then, the CDC had only a handful of scientists working on outbreak detection, severely hampering its ability to track potentially deadly illnesses.

 

With federal workers on leave, the states have had to pick up much of the slack.

In the case of food safety, state labs are investigating foodborne illnesses and communicating with each other — without the help of federal authorities, in many cases — to figure out whether outbreaks have spread.

Dr Christopher Braden, head of the CDC division that investigates foodborne illness, said the agency will be able to better monitor the salmonella outbreak with the recalled federal staff. But the agency is monitoring more than 30 outbreaks, and gaps still exist as the federal bureaucracy limps through a shutdown beginning its second week.

With staff furloughed last week, the CDC stopped monitoring for some foodborne pathogens, including shigella and campylobacter. The agency is now watching for those again, but Dr Braden said some investigations are still on the back burner, including an ongoing outbreak of salmonella from handling live poultry that has sickened more than 300.

CDC isn’t the only agency protecting health and safety that’s strained. The shutdown has forced the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to halt its regular mine safety inspections, which it normally conducts at each of the nation’s underground mines every three months.

The lack of inspections is coming under scrutiny after three mine workers died in separate accidents on three consecutive days during the past week. The coal mining industry has not had three consecutive days of fatal accidents in more than a decade. MSHA has said it’s premature to draw any conclusions about the link between the shutdown and the accidents, but the nation’s largest mine workers union has raised alarms.

Federal occupational safety and health inspectors also have stopped most workplace checks, and the National Transportation Safety Board is only investigating accidents if officials believe lives or property are in danger.

The Food and Drug Administration also has stopped routine inspections of food facilities in the United States and abroad, and border controls could be delayed. Food imports are still being inspected at borders, but any samples that need to be analysed could be stalled because there are fewer scientists to analyse them.

The CDC also has had to halt its surveillance of flu, an infectious disease that kills about 24,000 Americans in an average year.

This early in the flu season there is little illness, meaning little to test yet. But to fill in the gap, some state health departments have been receiving and testing samples that otherwise would have gone to CDC, said Ms Kelly Wroblewski of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

CDC also is slashing its staffing on quarantine stations at 20 airports and entry points. When airline pilots or customs workers become aware of a sick traveler, they flag quarantine officers who can detain, examine and isolate those who might be an infectious threat to the US public.

During the shutdown, quarantine station staff has been cut by 80 per cent, meaning there’s essentially only one person working at each station, said Dr Martin Cetron, who leads CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine. The lack of staff could heighten the possibility that some diseases could slip into the country at a time when measles is raging in Turkey and cholera is breaking out in Mexico.

Still, many federal workers who protect safety and health are still working, from air traffic controllers to airport screeners to the majority of federal law enforcement. Active duty military personnel are on duty. USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, the agency responsible for investigating the poultry farm in California that is linked to the salmonella outbreak, is also mostly staffed.

But the absence of so-called nonessential workers who are furloughed can have a dangerous ripple effect, said Ms Caroline Smith De Waal, director of food safety advocacy at the Washington-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest.

She noted that the CDC website has limited information and the USDA website is shut down, preventing concerned members of the public from finding out more information on the salmonella outbreak and other food-borne illnesses. The agencies aren’t tweeting or disseminating health safety information except for a few releases to the media. 

From my point of view from the above news. They are obviously doing their best effort just to save their hometown from being shutdown. If the government had given them a chance to change for the better , thereby they don’t have to go through some difficult situation such as shutting down company, fire staff, ETC;..i believe that if they do some little changes such like take care of things and environment issue. Like re-do where the mistake happens. Such like clear up unwanted items or things. Things like this if wanted to avoid disappointment they really need to start from now, OR they might just regret later in near future where they will loose those dear to them. So if i were in their shoes, i would make a biggest change even how little items or things might be. As i know that health is important to almost everybody across the globe. But if we just ignored important issue..things like this will just happen over and over again. Each every year people die of some cancer and illness related. And almost 99% of most people all send to the hospital, whether from work , school , public or even at home. As you can see our Earth , has a biggest problem in “Global Warming” issue, where there is some changes around us where the disaster happen such like “Tsunami , Tornado , Earthquakes , Country/Places Collapse..ETC;” and if the government around the world didn’t start any new ideas such like creating new things into this Earth, disaster wouldn’t start or happen too fast. What they need to keep in mind is that, they need to decressed what they trying to create and more nature if possible. World Peace People! That would be all for today! Thank you for reading!