Anyone who knows something about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) or Chinese internal martial arts (e.g., Taijiquan, which is the most well-known Chinese internal martial art) would invariably have heard of the word Qigong (or loosely speaking, the cultivation or manipulation of air or life force through work or exercise). TCM is based on the theory that good health comes from a balance of Qi and an absence of blockage of Qi in one’s body. Internal martial arts are based on the theory that one can increase one’s power by channeling the body’s Qi to a particular part of the body, e.g., the hand or foot.
One of the World’s Best Geriatric Centers
April 2009
3 Comments
A surprise awaited me when recently I and others were given a tour of the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care (YHC) while attending a conference in Toronto, Canada. Completely unexpected, I was actually touring one of the world’s best geriatric centers, and witnessing an example of the power of one.
The life expectancy of the residents of the YHC’s nursing homes after admission is 7 years, while the provincial average of nursing homes for Ontario, Canada is 2.5 years. Another way of presenting this is that in 2007, 15.8% of YHC’s nursing home residents passed away, as compared to Ontario’s average of 40%. This is even more impressive when considering that the new residents at YHC are on the average more frail and require about 9% more care than the Ontario average because of the longer waiting time for admission. The YHC has the longest waiting list, with all 805 beds occupied and a waiting list of over 2,000 people, and the projected waiting time for a standard bed in their Scarborough centers is about six years. The skin ulcer rate is 3%, while the provincial average is 30%. The use of restraints by residents is 1.2%, while the provincial average is 18.3%. The fall rate of residents is 8.9%, while the provincial average is 12.5%.
Japan’s Biological and Chemical Warfare in China during WWII
Rotten Leg Villages
Even today in just one small village of Caojie, near Jinhua in the province of Zhejiang in China, there are hundreds of victims of biological warfare still suffering from painful wounds originated more than 60 years ago when their village was decimated in 1942 by Japan with glanders, anthrax, and other biological weapon agents. Ruan Shufeng, shown below with his wife, is one such victim who suffers with a festering, open, ulcerous and extremely painful wound in his right leg, That is why Caojie and several other similar villages are called “rotten leg villages”
Read More »