To some, Yarra Fong may be a gift­ed med­ical tat­too artist, beau­ti­cian and en­tre­pre­neur. To many of the women she has worked on, she is a hero. Self­less, dar­ing, brave–Fong has pushed bound­aries in the beau­ty in­dus­try to boost the con­fi­dence of women with skin con­di­tions and de­fects; in­clud­ing can­cer pa­tients and women who as­pire to be suc­cess­ful in the field of beau­ty. Her pas­sion, how­ev­er, may have al­most cost her her life.

Cel­list Tra­cell Fred­er­ick, 27, at­tained a BSc in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy in 2016 and a Bach­e­lor of Law's de­gree (LLB) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus in 2018.

Preg­nan­cy can be an anx­ious time in the best of cir­cum­stances, but the spec­tre of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the in­creas­ing re­stric­tions im­posed on our lives as the world grap­ples with this virus, are enough to make any­one feel on edge. You may have planned to a de­tail for this mir­a­cle you ex­pect to de­liv­er, you over­came the hor­rid ex­pul­sions of the first trimester eme­sis(vom­it­ing), the ba­by room is set and ready to wel­come this new joy­ous ad­di­tion in your life. It’s just that no one ex­pect­ed a pan­dem­ic and sud­den­ly you are swarmed with words like spikes, high-risk and ven­ti­la­tion; and re­luc­tant­ly sleep­less nights and neck pains be­come a part of your dai­ly ex­is­tence.

My son’s first East­er cel­e­bra­tions - he was in-utero. Feel­ings of glee­ful an­tic­i­pa­tion were mixed with that of ap­pre­hen­sion, I was over­joyed to join my fam­i­ly and friends in com­mem­o­rat­ing East­er, but anx­ious, as I was break­ing my ‘re­stric­tions of bed rest’ in ven­tur­ing out while be­ing preg­nant, not dur­ing COVID-19, but nine years ago.

COVID-19 has hit all coun­tries hard, but its im­pact has been harsh­est on those com­mu­ni­ties which were al­ready vul­ner­a­ble and more like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence ad­verse con­se­quences.

Joined by the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, hun­dreds of thou­sands of build­ings, homes and com­mu­ni­ties around the world come to­geth­er dur­ing this month for Autism Aware­ness, to Light It Up Blue in recog­ni­tion of peo­ple with autism and those who love and sup­port them. Autism-friend­ly events and ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties take place all month, aim­ing to in­crease un­der­stand­ing and ac­cep­tance of peo­ple with autism, fos­ter world­wide sup­port and in­spire a kinder, more in­clu­sive world. Join the Guardian news­pa­per for World Autism Aware­ness Month to help us cre­ate aware­ness as we ex­plore the spec­trum of AUTISM in a spe­cial is­sue of our Health Plus mag­a­zine on Tues­day 27th April, 2021. For more in­for­ma­tion and to con­tribute to this mag­a­zine email: Guardian­health­plus2020@gmail.com

Every time the coro­n­avirus pass­es from per­son to per­son it picks up tiny changes to its ge­net­ic code, but sci­en­tists are start­ing to no­tice pat­terns in how the virus is mu­tat­ing.

For many of us, be­com­ing ill with any virus might put us on the couch for a day or two. It can be drain­ing, but af­ter re­cov­er­ing we can gen­er­al­ly get back to the things we’re used to. For some peo­ple, how­ev­er, con­tract­ing a vi­ral in­fec­tion can be life-al­ter­ing. It can cause months, years or even a life­time of de­bil­i­tat­ing symp­toms that dras­ti­cal­ly re­duce one’s qual­i­ty of life.

A new study re­leased last Fri­day 26th March by the Unit­ed Na­tions, re­veals that more than 100 mil­lion more chil­dren than ex­pect­ed, are falling be­hind the min­i­mum pro­fi­cien­cy lev­el in read­ing, due to COVID-re­lat­ed school clo­sures.

We have al­ways heard the phrase from our el­ders that “Our health is in our hands” and it holds true now more than ever. But does it come down to the strength of your im­mu­ni­ty? When we talk of im­mu­ni­ty, we gen­er­al­ly talk of cer­tain foods or drinks that can “boost” im­mu­ni­ty, reg­u­lar ex­er­cis­es or eat­ing a healthy di­et that in­cludes foods high in an­tiox­i­dants, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als. HEALTH PLUS de­cid­ed to take a deep dive in­to this dis­cus­sion, ex­plor­ing the truths and myths about OUR IM­MU­NI­TY.

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic stopped the world in its tracks a year ago and con­tin­ues to de­bil­i­tate lives and liveli­hoods glob­al­ly. More than two mil­lion peo­ple have died from com­pli­ca­tions re­lat­ed to the virus and more than 127 mil­lion peo­ple have been af­flict­ed and bil­lions of lives dis­rupt­ed.

As it stands, 90 per cent of cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go eat less than the rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly serv­ing of fruits and veg­eta­bles which aid healthy lifestyles.