Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
THE cutting edge of politics can be scalpel sharp and vindictive, as Cuba continues to discover. The 3-decade-old us trade embargo against Havana has the country floundering in a debilitating mess, compounded by critical shortages of common medicines from antibiotics to sterilising detergents, as well as essential supplies for paediatric …
On March 7, a woman from Cambridgeshire, UK, received a US $339,700 compensation in an out-of-court settlement after a surgeon failed to diagnose that she was suffering from breast cancer. In November 1994, the Cambridgeshire High Court ruled that the doctor had fallen below professional standards in failing to detect …
The British government's volte face on the ban on advertising breast milk substitutes has triggered alarm in medical circles. On March 1, the government tabled before Parliament a watered down regulation that will allow advertising in publications distributed through the public healthcare system. This law is at odds with a …
ONLY the pathologically optimistic expected the recently-concluded un World Summit for Social Development to trumpet to a momentous, pathbreaking climax. "Anything that we developing countries wanted, they (the industrialised nations) voted as a bloc against us," said a disgusted Mercedes Arzu Wilson, a Guatemalan government delegate, at the end of …
NOBODY is aware of the number of disabled people living in the remote corners of Papua New Guinea. Polio, meningitis, tuberculosis and birth defects, particularly hearing impairment, are endemic. The Port Moresby Special Education Centre, funded by the Australian Red Cross, caters to some 26 deaf children. The Centre's Outreach …
American biomedical researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, have devised a simple instrument to accurately measure carbon monoxide (co) in a person's lungs (Environment Science Technology, Vol 29, No 1). The device, invented by the Harvard scientists Kiyoung Lee and Yukio Yanagisawa, consists of a mouthpiece, an …
The Japanese computer giant, Toshiba Corporation, will now ensure a drastic reduction of paperwork in corporate offices. It has devised a system increasing the flexibility of networked computers. The new Wireless Desk Area system allows portable computers to form wireless communication networks. The equipment consists of communications software, with either …
TILL a few years ago, all abdominal surgeries left the patient with a long scar. But thanks to laparoscopy -- a surgical technique that obviates the need to cut open the abdomen -- most patients can now leave the operating table without carrying the ugly legacy of the surgeon's scalpel. …
The Supreme Court has directed all industries involved in mining or producing asbestos to create adequate healthcare mechanisms for diagnoses and treatment of workers engaged in these units. The industries have been asked to maintain a health record of every worker upto a period of 40 years from the beginning …
No more chewing the cud, the Health Ministry has decided. A national oral health policy will be announced soon. Currently tiding over teething problems, the ministry will launch a Rs 1.5 crore pilot project from 5 districts in different regions of the country. The pilot project, which will help the …
OVER the last few decades, the whirlwind of technology has changed the face of diagnosis, and medical treatment. 40 years ago, if a patient suffering from "effort angina" approached the physician, he would do a complete physical examination and after a series of tests, conclude that the patient is suffering …
GERMAN scientists have devised a method to repair blood vessels damaged during delicate surgery by coupling them using a novel biodegradable device. Anastomosis, or coupling of thin blood vessels with sutures, is usually an intricate task which requires a great deal of surgical time and skill. Although several mechanical devices …
PEOPLE suffering from coronary heart disease (CHD) can now hope for better survival chances, thanks to a new drug called "simvastatin" which can bring down the level of blood cholesterol. This drug succeeded in a largescale clinical trial conducted by a Scandinavian team of researchers (The Lancet, Vol 344, No …
Heart surgeon K M Cherian has become the first doctor in India to perform heart surgery using a new technique known as trans-myocardial revascularisation (TMR). Performed previously only in the US, TMR reduces the recovery time for heart surgery and prevents an excessive loss of blood, obviating the need for …
In a breakthrough in Alzheimer's disease research, American doctors have converted a simple eye test into a powerful diagnostic instrument for the disease (Science, Vol 266, No 5187). A research team led by Leonard Scinto and Huntington Potter of the Harvard Medical School, Boston, reports that the pupils of Alzheimer's …
Health care might become a major plank of the World Bank's list of projects. This year, the Bank will lend at least US $60 million for "micro-nutrient projects" in various countries to combat vitamin a, iodine and iron deficiencies. The biggest project, to be funded along with un agencies, is …
Malaria -- whose incidence dropped from an estimated annual 75 million cases with 0.8 million deaths before Independence to 0.1 million cases with no deaths by 1964 -- showed feverish activity in the '70s. It is stabilising now at about 2 million cases a year. Of late, however, a potentially …
Along with problems associated with unhealthy living conditions and drug resistance, tuberculosis poses an additional danger as it has targeted HIV carriers. As such, TB is a leading cause of death due to a single infectious agent. In the developing world, the annual incidence of all forms of TB is …
Historical ills Malaria It has been hypothesised that the malarial parasite evolved either with humans or even earlier. Hippocrates wrote about it in the 5th century BC. In India, Ayurvedic gurus' Charaka and Susruta related malaria to mosquito bites. For 2,000 years, the Chinese have been using extracts from the …
Right from the "60s, DDT resistance of the malaria parasite host, Anopheles culicifacies, was detected in Gujarat. It was a rising trend. Another important vector, A stephensi, became so rugged that it can now grow in stagnant water found in coolers, used tyres -- just about anywhere. DDT remains the …
