Author: Dr. Syed Hunain Riaz

We all have heard of and many of us have experienced what Typhoid is. It is an infection in humans caused by a bacterium called Salmonella Typhi/Paratypi. Typhoid is a food borne infection and transmitted through contaminated food and poor hygiene practices which causes cross infections. However, from the same family of Salmonella ( salmonella enterica) are other types of bacteria which cause food borne infections ,transmitted from animals (zoonotic) called ‘Salmonellosis’. It is caused by contamination of practically every kind of food we eat, mostly meats, poultry produce, raw vegetables and fruits and unpasteurized milk. There are different serotypes…

Mr ABC feels that for every sore throat and flu that he suffers from, he feels relief by consulting a local healer who practices in their residential block. And at the same time, he is adamant that he does not feel satisfied when has visited the GP in their locality. From a third person’s view, Mr ABC probably takes the same time to heal and recuperate after suffering from an ailment ( or maybe tilting a little in favour of the traditional healer). But the overwhelming sense of satisfaction he gets by consulting the healer has made him put his…

Its 2 am on a cold winter night and a lady is rushed in the Medical ER intake on a wheel chair, with a couple of attendants who apparently and understandably are distressed. Wearing a ‘bandana’ of sorts around here forehead, compressing it. She keeps on wailing, moaning and shouting at the attending Docs that she has been having high ‘BLOOD PRESSURE’ since long and has this band like headache every now and then. Her vitals turn up normal but the patient and attendants refuse to accept this and are adamant that she has ‘HIGH BP’.  When the history is…

A guy in his mid 20’s, walks into my clinic, appears to be well-groomed. Appears fidgety with his hands and legs when he sits down on the stool. Immediately after sitting down, he stuns me with a verbal ‘electrocution’ of sorts, when he says that he needs a CT-scan of his chest for this ‘something’ that creeps in his chest. According to him, his Chest x-ray was fine and another Doc had earlier told him to he needed a CT-scan to delve deeper to find the cause (which I doubt the Doc actually said that). After the initial shock and…

Mr. Khalid is a  Pakistani middle class ‘work your hind off’ day and night person who has to make provisions for his family. He works in a bank, has crazy work hours, hardly gets time for proper meals, and is worried sick most of the time about what’ll befall him and his family in the future.  Khalid has a constant sensation of fullness in his belly, a sour irritating taste in his mouth, mostly in the morning. The fullness makes him skip the afternoon meal/lunch. But he does take tea from the local tea club at the bank, one to…

Modern society while being a revolution in every aspect of life has its setbacks. The lightning pace at which this society trend has created a lot of health problems in all age groups and strata of society. From lack of physical activity to rigorous (almost dreadful) study schedules to long work hours. We literally have been entangled in a web of fancies of modern times. In all this ruckus of ‘keeping pace’, health has gone down our list of priorities in life. So much as that we believe in ‘damage control’ rather than ‘preventing’ health calamities in the first place.…

Short stature in children can cause a lot of distress, especially considering the expectations of our society with peer and family pressures looming large all the time. Short stature should be understood in terms of what should be expected and when you should start worrying and who to go to when you suspect or feel that your child is not growing as he/she should be. Stature is measured labeled statistically. Just to give an idea, in a group of people, we categorize people that are average, below average and that minority that is above average in terms of height. So…

HIV/AIDS, over the last decade, has recently not been labeled as the devastating illness as it was labeled some 20 or more odd years back; relative specifically to the Western world and the African continent. The Western World introduced HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs that were largely effective and therefore managed to curb the epidemic to almost nipping it in the bud (the emergence of new cases was successfully curbed). Having worked as ‘Incharge Physician’  at one of the busiest hospitals of Punjab, and facilitator for the Govt under the umbrella of WHO and its sister organizations will try to…

In life, we choose to stay oblivious of a lot of things around us. For most of us, health is one such important aspect of our lives and therefore, it is prudent that we change our thinking and choose to create health awareness for ourselves and for those around us. What Is Thyroid? The thyroid is a small gland, located in front of the neck (not visible) and is under the control of the pituitary gland in our brain. It controls the metabolism of every cell in the body, whether they are located inside your brain or in your gonads.…