Turkmenistan the world's most non-smoking country
Health-obsessed former Soviet Turkmenistan is the country with the world's lowest proportion of smokers, World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan said during a visit to the isolated nation. Chan said that just 8 percent of the population smoked, according to WHO figures. "Recently a WHO overview showed that in Turkmenistan only 8 percent of the population smokes," Chan told the country's authoritarian President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who is a dentist by training. "This is the lowest national indicator in the world. I congratulate you on this achievement," she said at a health forum in the capital Ashgabat.
Cited by state media, Chan noted that the country ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2011 by which time it had already banned smoking in public places. Also speaking at the forum, Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, Head of the Convention Secretariat, challenged the Central Asian state to drive smoking down to five per cent of the population in the coming years.
In 1990, 27 percent of Turkmen males over 15 and 1 percent of females smoked. A decade later Turkmenistan banned smoking in public places, state buildings and the army, as well as all forms of tobacco advertising. By comparison, 31.1 percent of the global male population over the age of 15 smoked in 2012, while 6.2 percent of females were smokers. President Berdymukhamedov, in power since the death of eccentric predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006, is a keen equestrian, while Niyazov campaigned against smoking and built a 36-kilometre "path of health" into the mountains surrounding Ashgabat which government officials were forced to walk. This April the gas-rich country of more than five million held a month of public exercises and sporting events under the slogan "health and happiness."
Bionic eye helps UK pensioner see
A partially sighted British pensioner has had most of his vision restored thanks to a "bionic eye" -- a device that converts video images from a miniature camera installed in his glasses to his brain. The University of Manchester announced the success of the operation on retired engineer Ray Flynn in a statement, saying it was a world first for the 80-year-old's particular condition. Flynn has age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a condition which affects over 500,000 people in Britain and is the most common cause of blindness in people aged over 50 in developing countries. The condition means that his vision is impaired and he cannot see things directly in front of him. This prevents him from reading or driving and makes it difficult for him to recognise faces.
"Mr Flynn's progress is truly remarkable... He is seeing the outline of people and objects very effectively," said Professor Paulo Stanga, who led the four-hour operation.
The device was fitted in June and activated on July 1. Retinal degenerative diseases like AMD affect more than 30 million people around the world, according to the US-based Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB). Bionic retinas are no longer restricted to the realm of science fiction and already help blind or partially blind people affected by other conditions.
The technology has already been used on dozens of people with retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The technology turns images captured by the camera into small electrical pulses, which are transmitted wirelessly to electrodes on the retina surface. The electrodes then stimulate the remaining cells and replicate patterns of light for the brain, which will eventually be interpreted fully by Flynn, allowing him to regain vision.
