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Health Check: Children of Jannah

Mourners weep for 9 children who died in a house fire, New York, 2007

20/11/2013

Children of Jannah

BBC World Service - Health Check, Children of Jannah

The UK charity providing specialist bereavement support for Muslims

The UK charity providing bereavement support for Muslims; Why Egypt has the highest rate of Hepatitis C in the world; How musical training influences our sense of touch.

When Hafizah Ismail's young nephew died suddenly in 2011, the family looked for bereavement support based on their Islamic faith, but were unable to find anything. So Hafizah, who is an educational consultant in the UK, decided to set up the Children of Jannah bereavement support group, which launched officially last month. The name stems from the Islamic belief that after the death of a child who has not reached puberty, including miscarriages and stillborn babies, the child is sent to heaven and is looked after by the Prophet Abraham. This idea has led to some common misunderstandings about how Muslims should grieve which Children of Jannah are working to clarify. 

Hepatitis C in Egypt
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease affecting mainly the liver, caused by a contagious virus that is transmitted through contaminated blood. Egypt is the country worst affected by Hepatitis C in the world, with around 12% of the population affected. BBC Arabic's Claire Read has been in Cairo finding out why infection rates have remained persistently high for a number of decades.

Health Myth
Should we feed a cold and starve a fever? Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre in the UK, tells Health Check whether there is any truth in this old saying.

Musical Training and Senses
New findings on the way trained musicians integrate sound with their sense of touch, could be used to develop rehabilitation techniques for patients who have lost one of their senses. For example if this has happened as a result of a stroke or degenerative disease. The research came about because Julie Roy, a postgraduate student in the Audiology Department at the University of Montreal, Canada, was wondering how her musical training as a pianist affected the way she used her senses. She presented her results last week at the annual meeting of the Society for NeuroScience conference in the United States.

(Image: Mourners weep for nine children who died in a house fire, New York, 2007. Courtesy: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

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