In India, a country with a vast population and a diverse socio-economic fabric, healthcare remains fraught with challenges including disparities in access. These socio-economic disparities are deep, and they influence health outcomes. It is imperative to bridge these gaps amid the ongoing epidemiological, nutritional and demographic transitions that are bringing …
children in sub-Saharan Africa not only use the sap of the African milk bush as glue, but they also love to play with it. It is even considered as an excellent source of herbal remedies. But this seemingly benign sap is quite harmful. Scientists have found that it causes one …
Lalnunmawii (name changed) lives in the Saron Veng locality of Mizoram’s capital, Aizawl. Of her eight siblings, three (two brothers and a sister) have fallen prey to cancer. One of her closest childhood friends died of stomach cancer in 2002. This woman’s husband had succumbed to oral cancer five years …
When Sanjay Sharma, a 30-year-old truck driver, was detected with throat cancer in 2002, doctors at the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences informed him that he could not be cured. Even as he was shattered by this news, doctors referred him to the S hanti Avedna Ashram …
On the Vietnam war: No war in the 20th century has seen as massive an assault on the environment. Some 70 million litres of Agent Orange, a herbicide and defoliant, and other toxic chemicals were rampantly used by us armed forces. It completely destroyed about 10 per cent of forests …
It is a story about underground water: when the nectar turns into poison. When a daily task of drinking water from the handpump becomes the source of crippling disease and death. This is not a "natural' disaster
function openmap(){ var popurl="html/20030415_map.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=650,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } Welcome to Wah india, a hazy land born of perfidy and malicious grace. Spread over territory co-extensive with 19 states in India, it is both traceable and unknown. Its physical geography, for instance, is quite virtual: Wah india keeps getting discovered; its expanding contours …
The 1970s and 1980s were a time of massive state investment in rural water development. Not only had more land to be brought under irrigation, but also drinking water supplied. These decades saw an exponential rise in the number of privately-owned pumpsets and wells, even as investment in public wells …
The official attitude towards fluoride-laced groundwater is best seen in the manner the state has gone about solutions. In a 1999 nationwide study New Delhi-based Fluorosis Research and Rural Development Foundation (frrdf) found that "only a few laboratories in the country have specified the methodology for fluoride analysis.' Experts claim …
Human negotiation with its own capacities and actions often tends to be triumphalist. A man admires his muscled torso; an elite believes itself to be the omphalos
Pollution US-based environmental pollution crusader Erin Brockovich and her partner Ed Masry are at it again. The target of their attention this time is three oil firms who, they accuse, are emitting cancer-causing poisons into the streets of Beverly Hills. Brockovich and Masry indicate they would soon take legal action …
Asbestos-related litigation in the us runs into billions of dollars today. So much so that the amount is estimated to exceed the combined cost of destruction caused by 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew. The trend has been accentuated by a spate of new lawsuits against relatively less risky industries that used …
the Union budget provides cancer-stick manufacturers and sellers huge reasons to feel puffed. The excise duty on nicotine (the narcotic used to spike tobacco with) has been reduced from 16 per cent to 8 per cent. An excise duty has been levied on chewing tobacco; since demand may now shift …
The incidence of cervical cancer is on the rise in India. It afflicts as many as 25 women per 0.1 million, making it the commonest cancer in the country. The disease, which affects the female genital tract, is both preventable and curable if detected early. But almost 70 per cent …
for the first time, cancer has been successfully treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. The out-of-body operation allows doctors to administer high doses of radiation to widespread tumours without affecting other organs. Doctors in Italy recently announced that they have used …
here, children are resigned to walking with a limp. And women, weighed down by sheer pain, have stopped looking skywards. In fact, age and sex appear to be no bar as infirmity pervades the entire area. Welcome to the Kachnarwa panchayat in Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh, where disability has …
On November 19, the Allahabad High Court (HC) ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to file an affidavit within three weeks indicating steps taken to prevent, treat and control fluorosis in Chopan block of Sonbhadra district. It also demanded details of the measures taken to rehabilitate the affected villagers. The court …
Up to four per cent of breast cancers in the developed world can be attributed to alcohol, according to a new analysis by Oxford-based research organisation Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer. The analysis was based on data from 53 previous studies, during which 58,515 with breast cancer …
