A Hindu temple in Canada will fund the provision of 500 artificial limbs for financially deprived disabled people in India, reports IANS.

The Vishnu Hindu Temple will provide approximately $20,000 for the purpose through the Bharat Vikas Parishad (BVP), said Bhudenra Doobay, president of the temple. BVP is an organisation that works in India in areas like health, sanitation and other social sectors.

BVP secretary P L Rahi said his organisation had already provided 10,000 artificial limbs to deprived people at a cost of Rs 20 million.

In 1999, they intend to provide 25,000 artificial limbs, costing about Rs 50 million. Rahi said their activities also include adopting villages. That implies constructing roads inside the village, providing facilities like sanitation, drinking water, etc.

Master cells

Master cells may restore brain tissue destroyed by disease. Injections of neural stem cells, a so-called master cell that can mature into any typeof brain tissue, may be able to restore neurons killed by Alzheimer's and other diseases that affect the whole brain, US Laboratory studies with mice suggest.

Dr Evan Y Snyder of Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston said the laboratory study shows that the neural stem cells will convert themselves into whatever type of cell the ailing brain needs, restoring functions that have been lost to disease, injury or birth defect.

The neural stem cell has the ability to become a whole range of cell types in the brain,'' said Snyder, the lead author of a study appearing in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ``The neural stem cell can accommodate all different regions of the brain and insert itself appropriately into the fabric of the brain.''

Dr Gerald D Fischbach, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, one of the national institutes of health, said in a statement that Snyder's study shows that neural stem cells are capable of moving to allparts of the brain.

Indigenous vaccine for AIDS

An indigenous vaccine for AIDS is being developed by using traditional resources available in the country, Union minister of state for health and family welfare Dalit Ezhilmalai has said.

The project, which is in its initial stages, would be a combined effort by the National AIDS Control Organisation, the Department of Bio-Technology and the Indian Council for Medical Research, said the minister.

The Indian scientists would follow the decision taken at the recent health conference held at Geneva and the WHO has assured full support and cooperation in this regard, he said.

Replying to a question on patenting of the vaccine, the minister said, ``We will not allow anybody to take our rights, and we know to protect them''.In order to give impetus to traditional systems of medicine, Ezhilmalai said that a full-fledged Siddha national research institute was coming up at Tambaram in Chennai with Central aid of Rs 100 crore, for which the stategovernment has allotted free land. New techniques for skin transplantA novel technique to treat vitiligo (leucoderma) that is manifested in white patches on the skin is being introduced in a city hospital in Chennai.

Dr S Palanisamy, managing director of Kumaran Hospital, said that the technique developed in Sweden involved separating the melanocytes (pigment cells) of the patients and transplanting them on to the white patches after mixing the healthy cells in a culture medium.

Dr Vivek Bhat who has been trained by the Swedish doctors, Dr Mats J Olson and Dr Lennart a Juhlin, who developed the technique, will perform the procedure in the hospital. Bhat has performed over 300 procedures on vitiligo patients with about 85 per cent success.

Bhat said the procedure could be done in an out-patient theatre without hospitalisation under local anaesthesia and the patient could leave for home after the transplant. Treatment of up to 150-500 sq. cm was now possible.Bhat said that pigmentation occurred within 3-6weeks and covered the entire patch within three months. The treatment was effective only in stable patches. White patches caused by exposure to chemicals and burns could also be treated by the procedure.