June 12, 2019

Educated Dutch men drink the most

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Orangemaster @ 9:06 pm

Every country seems to have different guidelines as to what people should and should not drink. In the Netherlands last year, 4 out of 10 Dutch people heeded the advice of the Dutch Health Council to not have more than one glass (no idea of the quantity or the unit) of alcohol a day.

Last year some 80.4% of all Dutch adults drank alcohol, with highly educated men drinking the most. Out of the highly educated, 7 out of 10 Dutch people didn’t follow the Health Council advice, while for folks with a lower level of education, it was 5 out of 10. The older Dutch people are, the more they follow the council’s advice.

Dutch men drink more excessively on a regular basis than women: 14 glasses a week for women and 21 for men. Again, no clue how much alcohol is in a glass. Heavy drinking is seen as at least 4 glasses a day for women and 6 glasses a day for men. Four or even six glasses is a night down the pub for me, but then not every day or even every week or month.

According to this illustration, the excessive drinkers are aged 20-24 and 65-74, while the heavy drinkers are 20-24 followed by 18-19. I’m guessing the older ones are retired – good on them.

I drink less than I used to, but I have to say the cheap price of alcohol in general lets me drink more than I did in Canada. You can buy half a litre of beer for € 0,50 and a litre of wine for € 1,50. Granted, it’s not the good stuff.

(Link: foodlog.nl)

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June 8, 2019

Amsterdam to get a drugs museum

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 8:46 pm

Poppi is slated to be the first-ever drugs museum of The Netherlands in Amsterdam.

According to the founders, the country does not have a public institution which offers low-threshold education on drug policy and addiction. Misconceptions about drugs are widespread, and the story of drugs is not black and white.

Poppi plans to engage visitors and inform them from different perspectives. They want people to form an opinion about drugs based on knowledge and facts, and not just on emotions as is often the case.

For anyone in Amsterdam this month, you can find out more Poppi and donate all while having drinks at www.denieuweanita.nl on June 16 where Poppi will be presenting its project.

Find out more about Poppi in this video:

(Link: poppi.amsterdam, Photo: DEA)

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March 12, 2019

Dutch doctors’ assistants victims of daily violence

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 10:51 am

According to the Dutch association for doctors’ assistants NVDA, some 62% of doctors’ assistants were faced with violence over the past two years, based on a survey among nearly a thousand members. Incidents included spitting, hitting, kicking, vandalism, being threatened with an ax, knife or firearm. and a host of verbal threats, such as ‘I’ll wait until you finish your shift’ over the phone. The NVDA says threats of all kinds are a daily occurrence from patients that are clearly frustrated about not being served as they expected to be served.

Only 11% of the doctors’ assistants involve the police in the threats. The reasons are the assistants don’t quite know if that’s something other assistants do or even how to react. Some measures being taken include making sure the support staff is behind a glass wall rather than at a reception counter. As well, it might help for patients to know what a doctors’ assistant actually does, possibly reducing the number of complaints as well since people often want to be treated fast enough as they have taken time work often and don’t want to wait.

I very much like my doctor’s office and my doctor. My only complaint is that the assistant (in my case often a receptionist with no medical training) asks me what the problem is, but then also starts giving me their opinion or asking me what I’ve done to alleviate the problem upon which I tell them that’s why I want to see a doctor. If I wanted to talk to someone unqualified I could also keep talking to myself or use Google, but of course, I don’t tell them that. As well, it’s well known that in the Netherlands, the receptionist and/or assistant are trying to dissuade people from seeing the doctor to keep waiting times down, but often this only helps create more frustration.

Any Dutch doctors, nurses, etc. in the house? Feel free to weigh in!

(Links: nltimes.nl, rtlnieuws.nl)

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February 19, 2019

Gym refuses man with service dog: he’s not blind

Filed under: Animals,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 2:15 pm

A gym in Wormeveer, North Holland has refused entry to a client with PTSD and his service dog simply because the man is not blind. The gym client is a former local neighbourhood agent that suffers from PTSD as a result of having dealt with many life-threatening situations, including trying and sadly failing to save children from a burning house.

His PTSD meant the end of his career, but going to the gym should not be a stressful situation. The dog is welcome everywhere else he goes, and yes, he has filed a complaint of discrimination. Before it went that far, the man and the gym owner discussed the situation, but the owner wouldn’t budge.

Service dogs are sometimes denied entry to businesses by mistake, simply because business owners don’t know the law. However, if someone has a service dog, it’s usually for a damn good reason, and they don’t have to be blind to get one. The dog is trained much in the same way and it taught to stay calm, so the only issue is the owner’s reluctance.

And this, folks, is how you lose clients.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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February 6, 2019

Dutch finally allow the registration of stillborn children

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:19 am

Baby-booties

As of February 10, parents of stillborn children in the Netherlands will have one of their dearest wishes come true: they will finally be able to register their babies in the Personal Records Database.

Although it is compulsory in the Netherlands to register the birth of a stillborn child, which applies if the child was born after 24 weeks of pregnancy, for many grieving parents, their baby was still considered ‘non existent’.

“A stillborn child does not exist in the registration of birth, but only in the registration of death”, according to Dutch law. The explanation is that the Personal Records Database is used to provide general data about people necessary for the government to execute its tasks, which means that it ‘doesn’t make sense’ to include data about a stillborn child in this system. However, back when this issue was up for discussion in Parliament, the Minister of Internal Affairs was unable to explain why this leads to the conclusion that registering the birth of this child was unnecessary as was issuing a birth certificate for them.

Losing a child is surely very traumatic, and being left with only a death certificate cannot possibly help alleviate parents’ grief in any way whatsoever. And since by law every child, born live or dead, must be registered after birth within three days according to Dutch law and international law, this practice runs counter to Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As well, making a distinction between liveborn and stillborn children is a violation of the right of the child to non-discrimination according to Article 2 of the CRC.

Anybody in the Netherlands who has had a stillborn baby can now register them retroactively, following a proper change in the law. The Dutch government estimated about 550 people a year who will register stillborns, while knowledge centre Stille Levens specialised in stillborns puts the number at around 800, based on figures from 2016.

(Links: nu.nl, leidenlawblog.nl, Photo of baby booties by Winam, some rights reserved)

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January 27, 2019

Why Volendam has a disease named after it

Filed under: Health,History,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:55 pm

Volendam

Recently I was in Amsterdam’s famous Jordaan neighbourhood and decided to pop into an old brown café to have a drink. One of the bar staff was new, and she told me she was from Volendam, which only has 22,000 or so residents. Her comment also brought with it an inevitable discussion about ‘palingpop’ (‘eel pop’, typically Volendam music sung by the likes of Jantje Smit and Nick & Simon, which she’s not a fan of) and hereditary diseases.

Referred to as the ‘Volendam sickness’ and known more properly as ‘Volendam neurodegenerative disease’, this one village is know for “Pontocerebellar hypoplasia type 2 (PCH-2), a heterogeneous group of rare neurodegenerative disorders caused by genetic mutations and characterised by progressive atrophy of various parts of the brain such as the cerebellum or brainstem (particularly the pons) for which there is no cure”. Any child born with this disease will die before they reach 10. According to Dutch wikipedia, one out of every seven residents of Volendam is a carrier, and the chance of PCH-2 is one out of 250 births, while for the Dutch population it is one out of 180,000.

The bar woman talked about it being standard fare for her family members and their partners who wanted to have children to be tested for diseases, as the chances of being a carrier is high. Research has shown that European patients who contract the disease are all related 10 to 12 generations back to the same ancestor, and quick Google search tells me that the entire village of Volendam stem from about seven ancestors. People from Volendam are a very tight tribe, as told by my bar woman who said that when she came to live in Amsterdam it caused quite a stir in her family. And if someone from Volendam does marry an ‘outsider’, you can bet they will try and push for the new couple to live in Volendam.

Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful village full of tourists, and I’m sure it has a lot more stories to tell.

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December 23, 2018

Dutch boy collects over 50,000 euro for diabetes

Filed under: Health,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:35 pm

Twelve-year-old Bas Schipper from Veendam, Groningen did a one-day tour of Dutch train stations on December 22, playing all 16 train station pianos in the country. Bas started playing Maastricht and finished in Groningen, in a South to North kind of way.

His goal was to collect about 5,000 euro for diabetes, but as I write this, he’s collected 54,382 euro and counting. He decided to do this for his sister and others who have diabetes.

Feel free to click the link below to donate or find out more.

(Link: diabeatit.nl)

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November 26, 2018

Serious lack of birth control pills still unresolved

Filed under: Health by Orangemaster @ 2:55 pm

A problem that affects the population’s sexual health and continues to appear in the media in much too lukewarm of a fashion, is the fact that four of the seven major brands of birth control pills have not been available for months in the Netherlands, including the most popular non-name brand.

Most companies didn’t exactly shout from the rooftops that they could no longer supply their products. Even though the government is acutely aware of the situation, calls it ‘a scandal’ and promised to sort it out in September, we’re approaching December and the problem persists. Production upgrades that went awry and attempts to fix the problems have caused a pile of problems that genuinely qualify as a clusterfuck.

According to Rutgers, a sexual and reproductive health organisation, 63% of Dutch women between 18 and 24 use the pill as their main contraception, and in this case, it is the no-name, major brand pill that’s been entirely unavailable. In this country, it is policy to prescribe no-name cheaper brands before anything else, and I’m sure price and having taken the Pill out of the free healthcare package not helping in any way, shape or form.

Options? Buying pills off Dutch auction sites for ‘usurious prices’, including buying pills from dubious sources as if it were illegal drugs. Why a problem that affects more than half of the population – it’s an issue for women and their partners! – can’t be solved is not just a scandal, it’s a general health hazard and embarrassing for such a rich country.

(Links: vice.com, nos.nl)

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November 21, 2018

Nutrition centre tells men to eat less meat

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

eggs1

Many countries have some sort of organisation that tells folks what they should and should not be eating. As of late, the Dutch Netherlands Nutrition Centre is telling men specifically that they should eat less meat.

According to the centre, men should not eat more than 500 grams of meat a week. Women apparently eat about 400 grams, so they’re not being targeted.

With a nation-wide campaign featuring Dutch men wearing T-shirts with mostly English-language food puns, the T-shirts as well as the campaign advises men to trade in meat for legumes, nuts and eggs.

Comments on Twitter to the announcement range from ‘I’ll decide what I eat, that’s my business’ and ‘telling people to eat eggs isn’t helpful.’ The idea of the campaign is to make men more aware of getting cancer, Type 2 diabetes and strokes.

(Link: parool.nl)

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October 1, 2018

Dutch woman asks exes to pay for birth control

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 4:16 pm

In the Netherlands and surely elsewhere there are phone apps you can use to ask people to pay for their share of things, like dinner or something else that needs to be split up. One twentysomething Dutch woman decided to send her exes a payment request for her birth control pills, with the idea that it remains very odd for women to bear the entire burden for it including paying for it, while men don’t have to do anything.

Until age 21, the Dutch basic insurance covers the pill, but after age 21, you have to pay for it yourself. The price also depends on which pill someone takes. Microgynon 30 is one of the most used pill and costs less than 30 euro a year. An IUD costs between 70 and 150 euro, and the price for having it inserted is between the 250 and 500 euro. If I remember correctly, until recently it was way cheaper to have it inserted.

If a Dutch woman takes the pill for 30 years, that’s still 900 euro she has to pay on her own. That’s not a ridiculous amount, but again why do women have to pay for it themselves? It’s just as much men’s responsibility to make sure that pregnancy does not occur when that’s the plan, and still men have no side effects whatsoever.

The trend in the Netherlands (at least from what I can see as of late) is that women don’t want to be solely responsible for contraception and unwanted pregnancies.

The woman doesn’t send her ex partners a huge bill, but asks for a 1,50 euro contribution. She got reasonable responses and payments from three ex partners. Then again, splitting the cost of condoms is surely also a reasonable request.

Maybe the Dutch are onto something.

(Link: vice.com, Photo by Flickr user Spec-ta-cles, some rights reserved)

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