The number of young people using cocaine in England and Wales is among the highest in Europe, according to a new survey.
Five percent of 15- to 34-year-olds are estimated to have taken cocaine in the past year, the survey reveals. Only young people in Spain are slightly more likely to have taken the drug, reported Telegraph.co.uk.
The figures were revealed by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, based in Brussels.
About four and a half million Europeans are estimated to have used cocaine in the past year, according to the report, which warned that the drug was “a growing public health issue“.
Spain also has the highest rate of cannabis use in Europe, where it is used by 22 percent of 15- to 34-year-olds. The figure is 16.3 percent in Britain-- below the Czech Republic, France and Italy.
In Britain, 18 percent of 11-year-olds and 63 percent of 15-year-olds said they had been offered drugs.
Marcel Reimen, the chairman of the centre, said the survey confirmed “the growing importance of cocaine in Europe’s drug problem“.
Vernon Coaker, a Home Office minister, said: “Drug use is at its lowest level in 11 years. However, I have always recognized that tackling the harm caused by drugs is one of the most formidable challenges we face.“

Lack of proper toilet facilities and sanitation kills almost two million people a year, most of them children, the World Toilet Association said at its first meeting on Nov. 22.
“It is regrettable that the matter of defecation is not given as much attention as food or housing,“ Sim Jae-duck, the association’s South Korean head, told the meeting at its recently opened lavatory-shaped headquarters south of Seoul, Reuters reported.
Sim, a lawmaker nicknamed “Mr. Toilet“, said some 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, with potentially fatal consequences.
About 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases that are mainly blamed on inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the Western Pacific, Shigeru Omi, told the meeting.
The majority of these deaths occur in Asia and 90 percent of the fatalities are children under the age of five, he added.
“Just imagine the number of children whose lives could be saved through simple low-cost interventions in sanitation and hygiene,“ Omi told the meeting.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the “Year of Sanitation“ and is calling for a renewed effort to improve sanitation and hygiene facilities, especially in developing countries.
Several charities also marked World Toilet Day on Nov. 19 by launching international campaigns for more hygiene awareness and investments in toilet facilities.
The Seoul meeting, which brought together public health officials from around the world and UN agencies, aims to raise funds for sanitation in developing countries.
“The funding needed is not overwhelmingly large, but the return is immense,“ said Vanessa Tobin of UN children’s agency UNICEF. “Political support is extremely important. Advocacy for this issue is a high priority.“
According to the United Nations, spending $10 billion a year could halve the proportion of people without basic toilet facilities by 2015, and Tobin said this investment would net an estimated $84 billion in savings from improved public health and better living conditions.
In some cultures, the solution requires very little water, as is the case in sub-Saharan Africa where ash on top of a pit is often all that is needed, she said.
“It is very important to remember most people who don’t have access are poor people living in rural areas,“ Tobin added.

Avian flu, chikungunya, tuberculosis: faced with the threat of diseases from around the world, a team of experts at a new EU crisis cell in Sweden monitors health risks in Europe, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice.
On the wall, giant screens display international news channels covering the latest world developments. Five clocks show the time in Atlanta, London, Stockholm, Moscow and Tokyo, and posters recall the emergency procedures to be followed in the event of a health alert, reported AFP.
Five European specialists who work full-time in the Emergency Operations Centre --from Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and Italy--scour specialized Internet sites, articles and press releases from around the world, using keyword searches for various diseases.
During a recent visit to the crisis centre, an electronic sign read: alert level zero. No serious health risks, no emergency plan to set into action.
The crisis unit, which has yet to be officially inaugurated, is part of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), a European Union agency based in Stockholm.
The ECDC, operational since 2005 and whose 150 employees hail from almost all of the EU member states, is aimed at bolstering Europe’s protection against infectious diseases.
“ECDC’s main mandate is to identify the threats, to assess and evaluate these threats, to come up with scientific advice for policy makers and ... to promote the preparedness of the European Union countries towards epidemics,“ the agency’s Hungarian director, Zsuzsanna Jakab, told AFP.
If a health risk is detected, the ECDC immediately contacts the country or countries concerned, which can take over the matter.
The crisis unit demonstrated its usefulness earlier this year when a worldwide health alert was issued over a US traveler suffering from tuberculosis.
US health officials had determined, albeit erroneously, that the man who had traveled from Greece to Italy was infected with a potentially lethal strain of the disease resistant to antibiotics.
The man then flew to Montreal via Prague before authorities finally caught up with him on his return to the United States.
“Given the very serious form (of the disease), all of the passengers who may have been in contact with him needed to be taken care of,“ explained Denis Coulombier, head of the ECDC’s Preparedness and Response Unit.
Within 24 hours, the Emergency Operations Centre had identified all of the passengers who may have been exposed to the disease and who needed to consult a doctor immediately.
Coulombier stressed the importance of strong European collaboration and a joint approach to health sector challenges, but said that getting 30 countries (the 27 EU members plus Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein) to work together was at times laborious.

Some 330,000 children died of AIDS in 2007.

Below are the most recent figures from the UN AIDS agency, including new HIV infections and AIDS deaths in 2007, according to a report.
As a result of a statistical revision, the UN agency reduced by nearly seven million its estimate for the total number of HIV sufferers in 2006: it now estimates that there were 32.7 million people living with the virus last year. The 2006 report put the figure at 39.5 million, AFP reported.
1) Number of people living with HIV/AIDS in 2007 Worldwide: 33.2 million (in a range from 30.6 to 36.1 million) Adults (15-49 years old): approx. 30.8 million
Adult women: approx. 15.4 million (half the total) Children (Under 15 years old): 2.5 million.
2) New HIV contaminations in 2007: Worldwide: 2.5 million (in a range of 1.8 to 4.1 million) Adults: 2.1 million Children: 420,000.
3) AIDS deaths in 2007: Worldwide: 2.1 million (in a range of 1.9 to 2.4 million) Adults: 1.7 million Children: 330,000.

Tribes in IranÕs western Illam province immigrate to warmer places in winter.

Married men have accrued average savings of £8,000, while married women have saved just £5,000.

Married men are more likely to be paying money into a pension and savings account than their wives are, a report has showed.
There are large differences between men and women’s levels of saving, pension provision and debt within couples, and these inequalities grow when marriages break down, with men recovering financially far more quickly than women.
Becoming a parent also has a far greater ’economic shock’ on women than it does on men, according to the Fawcett Society which is based in UK.
The group, which campaigns for gender equality, found that men and women who have never been married pay an average of £100 a month into a savings account, while married women also make contributions of this level. But married men pay in 50 percent more, at an average of £150 a month, reported The Press Association.
At the same time married men have accrued average savings of £8,000, while married women have saved just £5,000.
Married men were also more likely to be paying into a pension than their wives, with 72 percent of husbands saving towards their retirement, compared with only 68 percent of wives and 54 percent of single people of both sexes.
However, the research found that married men tend to accrue higher levels of debt than women, owing an average of £5,000, while women tended to owe 60 percent less at £2,000.
The report found that women also take longer to recover financially from divorce and from having children. Around 36 percent of men and 34 percent of women were regularly saving in the year before a divorce took place, but one year after a divorce this had fallen to 32 percent among men and 28 percent among women.
After five years. savings levels among men had recovered and were higher than before the divorce with 42 percent of men setting money aside, but it took women 10 years to reach a similar position.
The group added that married men tended to have 38 percent more savings than married women, but this soared to 87 percent among people who were separated and 41 percent among divorcees. A similar pattern was seen among couples when a first child is born, with 46 percent of women and 45 percent of men saving before the birth, but these levels fell to just 34 percent among new mothers and 42 percent among new fathers. After 10 years the savings rates of fathers had recovered, but only 40 percent of mothers were saving.

Japan’s employers should provide mental health services to workers suffering from depression and other illnesses, the government said after reporting that more than 30,000 people killed themselves last year.
In its first annual report on suicide and suicide prevention measures, the Cabinet Office said 32,155 people killed themselves in 2006, the 9th straight year the figure has exceeded 30,000.
The total number of suicides represents a drop of 397 from the previous year, the government said. Still, Japan’s suicide rate ranks 9th highest in the world, the government added, citing World Health Organization data. Lithuania had the highest rate, followed by Belarus and Russia, while the US ranked 43, reported AP.
Health problems were believed to factor in almost 50 percent of the Japan’s suicides in 2006, followed by money problems and household difficulties, the report said. Forty-eight percent of those who killed themselves were unemployed, it said.
Suicides first passed the 30,000 mark in 1998 during an economic slump that left many bankrupt, jobless and desperate.
“This is a problem that needs to be dealt with comprehensively by society,“ government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said at a news conference.
The central government and local authorities should work together to implement a law approved in June that calls on employers to offer mental health services to employees, Machimura said.
Other measures implemented by the government in June aim to tackle unemployment and filter websites that promote suicide. The government’s goal is to cut the suicide rate by 20 percent in 10 years.

In this land and season of plenty, low-income and rural Americans continue to have difficulty finding healthy foods that are affordable, a new study finds.
One study shows that low-income Americans now would have to spend up to 70 percent of their food budget on fruits and vegetables to meet new national dietary guidelines for healthy eating, reported HealthDay News.
And a second study found that in rural areas, convenience stores far outnumber supermarkets and grocery stores--even though the latter carry a much wider choice of affordable, healthy foods.
“I think it’s a matter of raising awareness among health professionals--and that could
be dieticians or diabetes educators or even
doctors--that when we typically give people a recommendation to eat more fruits and vegetables, that is actually so much more complicated in a rural environment,“ said Angela Liese, study author of the second report and an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.
“There needs to be some thought given to how do you make these recommendations,“ Liese said.
Despite clear evidence that eating your vegetables can ward off heart disease, diabetes and cancer, only 40 percent of Americans meet the old guidelines and less than 10 percent meet the new guidelines, according to one 2006 study.
People with more money eat more fruits and vegetables than those with less money, research shows. In turn, poorer people also assume a greater disease burden relative to their wealthier counterparts.
“Eating more fruits and vegetables would reduce the disease burden. That’s why we have new guidelines. The science is very solid on that,“ said Diana Cassady, lead author of the first study, on food pricing.
“What the profession needs to do is figure out not just the science and appropriate guidelines but how to help people meet those guidelines,“ said Cassady, an assistant professor of public health sciences at the University of California, Davis.