International Thalassaemia Day

Okay, so International Thalassaemia Day was on 8th May. But i just stumbled across this on MMR.

Just to quote.. (from The Star)

Health authorities are taking bold measures to combat thalassaemia by urging couples who carry the faulty gene either not to marry or have children.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said battling the hereditary disease on all fronts began with discouraging couples who are both thalassaemia gene carriers from getting married, as there was a high risk of their children contracting the gene.

“Love is blind, (but) sometimes we cannot be blind to the risks involved, so it is important that such couples are properly counselled,” he said when launching the national-level International Thalassaemia Day.

Dr Chua said that if such couples decided to go ahead with the marriage, then the authorities would advise them to avoid having children.

In cases where a child is conceived, the authorities would recommend abortion, although a final decision lay with the couple themselves, taking into consideration their religious practices, he added.

Malaysia currently has 800,000 to 1.2 million thalassaemia carriers nationwide.

We just had this discussion in Gombak with Dr Sasi about whether 2 thalassaemia carrier parents should abort their child. The chances of their kids being thalassaemic is 25%, being carrier is 50%. Don't think we come to a unanimous conclusion on whether they should go ahead with abortion.

War of The Hormones Is Upon Us

Well, endocrine exam is tomorrow. All the best to us!! =)

Think about it.. No more unintelligible P. Kumar lectures for more than a month (at the very least). Is that not sufficient cause for celebration? Haha...

Happy Easter to those who are celebrating it & enjoy your rotations.. Whee!!

And to all of those who feel a little unprepared for the exam, just listen to the Superman theme song before going to the exam hall.. Its a good morale booster =)

the sem4 slacking syndrome

so. our first week of endocrine has ended. judging by the number of movies watched, hours spent in the cafeteria talking crap and lack of time in the library, it seems to me that we have all fallen victim to the disease called "the sem4 slacking syndrome".

this syndrome is an accumulation of symptoms like letting notes backlog till the remaining 2 weeks of the system, planning group trips to exotic destinations during rotations, having lunch outside of imu almost every day and spending much more time with (newly-acquired) better halves doing activities that do not involve group study sessions.

what's the aetiology of this disease? is it the jealous remarks of sem5 friends who say, "eh enjoy sem4 ok. i miss it liao."? or the two-month relaxation period we all enjoyed so much that csu lecturers are complaining about our lack of enthusiasm and apparent brain atrophy? perhaps the "sem4 slacking syndrome" is a sort of self-reward for making it through the toughest exam in our pre-clinical years?

what do you think?

*note: lecture powerpoints will be uploaded soon! promise!

updated: endocrine timetable, csu manual & pbl trigger

oh dear. the first reminder of the end of our holidays is here. ladies and gents, presenting our endocrine system timetable (incl pbl groupings), csu manual & pbl trigger.

here's more bad news: we have an english placement test on tuesday, 13th march. so brush up on your grammar and summary-writing skills!

see y'all in about a week (gah)!

uh-oh

i didn't test the template in IE. turns out there's no scroll bar in the template if you're using IE. which means you're screwed if you use a comp with a mouse without a scroller. oops. thanks paul for pointing that out.

oh dear oh dear.

change template? or can someone help figure out how i can insert a scrollbar? it works fine in firefox.

revamped!

hey m205! happy chinese new year!

well, since it's the hols and i have *some* time on my hands, i decided to look for a template for our blog! really liked this one because it's simple, clean and easy to navigate, although i need to add in a "home" link back to the main page and i haven't figured out how to do that just yet.

anyway, hope you guys like this and maybe the new look will motivate everyone to blog here more often. everyone is welcome to contribute...just inform siaw ok?

see you guys in 2 weeks' time!

No one might be reading this.. but ah well. Good luck to those taking viva in a few hours time! You guys can do it, we'll see you in sem 4 for sure! ;)