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 burst of infectious diseases like malaria, kala-azar, cholera and tuberculosis in India is indicative of a deeper malaise. Despite a stated emphasis on participatory health management, in actual practice the dependence on expensive curative and therapeutic drugs is matched only by inadequate emphasis on preventive measures. With the growing …
The internal environment of hospitals in Delhi may pose a health threat to patients due to high concentrations of airborne fungi. This was revealed in a recently published report based on a study conducted by the Delhi-based Centre for Biochemical Technology (CBT), a laboratory run by the Council of Scientific …
THE euphoria among cardiologists at the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (aiims) over the country's first heart transplant operation has proved to be shortlived. Plans to perform another such operation in October received a setback when the prospective recipient, 38 year-old Ram Kali, suddenly refused to accept a …
ONE of India's most outstanding economic jewels has lost its glitter. All that Surat could do is wait weak-kneed and groggy for a Pied Piper to slough off its gigantic army of rats and bandicoots, which recently sent the world's most dreaded disease rustling insidiously through India. One of the …
Till September 1994, plague was s 'upposedly a forgotten disease in India. It caught the country's medics aghast at their own ignorance. But after its outbreak, medical authorities have taken to pointing out that they had never claimed the disease had been eradicated from the country. The bacterium which causes …
Although the plague was thought to have been sent packing in 1966, isolated suspected cases have since been reported, the most recent being from Him Pradesh in 1984. Besides, since 1989, the NICD's Bangalore-based Pla Surveillance Unit has been rattling off outbreak predictions - all of them binned. Serum tests …
The plague caught institutions everywhere completely inert. Only the Plague Surveillance Unit (PSU) in Bangalore - the last of its kind in the country - and its sub-unit at Kolar in Karnataka, were active during the 190s. Delhi's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) had the only group of epidemiologists …
In the wake of the plague came the clamour for plague-beating drugs, particularly tetracycline. Says Prabir Biswas, director (marketing) of the Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (IDPL), "When all hell broke loose, we had a stock of 4.8 million capsules ready." IDPL's Hrishikesh and Hyderabad plants functioned 24 hours a …
The plague had been virtually non-existent in India for the past 2 decades. What was the cause of the recent outbreak? One thing should be clear: the plague bacilli were always present in various parts of the country among rodents. Whenever there are ecological imbalances, the plague bacilli will create …
A WELL-KNOWN quasi-ecumenical argument against the existence of God is the existence of the mosquito: apart from being frustratingly acrobatic and musically demented, the little bugger serves no evident purpose at all in the Almighty's scheme of things. Except one which the Lord's herd can do without: over the millennia, …
Russia's health care system is on the verge of collapse. With a freeze on capital investment, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that a leading hospital in Moscow has resorted to using cats to root out mice and vermin from operation theatres. One of the more serious facets …
The travails of Nepal's estimated 50,000 cancer patients may soon be at an end. Instead of going abroad for treatment, they will have access to medical treatment at the 100-bed B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital at Chitwan in south Nepal. The US $ 10 million hospital, being built with help …
HOSPITAL bathrooms need no longer be breeding grounds for harmful bacteria. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed bathroom tiles and sanitary ware that can convert water into hydrogen peroxide, which has anti-bacterial properties. The researchers coated the tiles and sanitary ware with a thin film of titanium oxide, …
The linkages between environmental degradation and human health are well established, but it seems that governments, especially in the developing world, are the last to hear the news. And because of their blinkered approach to health care, they have been slow to check problems which are clearly linked to a …
of 829 basic health units covering 96 per cent of the rural population. Only 229 actually function as health units, according to a Panos Features report. The rest are used as godowns, rest houses, barns and small industries. Besides, there is a paucity of basic medicines and sophisticated equipment even …
A RECENT Consumer Court verdict dismissing a compensation claim by a woman who was infected with the HIV virus following blood transfusion at the Wanless hospital in Miraj in Maharashtra may hold grave consequences for patients, fear activists. Subsequently, a child the woman gave birth to also carried the AIDS …
Propelled into action by the suffering of relatives and patients afflicted with the Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and Alzheimer's disease, family members and doctors have joined hands to set up the Motor Neurone Disease Association of India and the Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India to help patients deal …
THE dismal state of aboriginal health has prompted both doctors and the government to make health care of the native Australians their top priority. Brendan Nelson, federal president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), has said aboriginal health is the "number one public health problem in Australia". According to AMA, …
Operators of X-ray machines and patients in India may be vulnerable to unnecessary radiation overexposure. This was revealed by A Gopalakrishnan, chairperson of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), at the 47th Congress of the Indian Radiological and Imaging Association in Kochi recently. According to an AERB study of 750 …
CAPITALISING on more than 100 years of expertise in plant product chemistry, Dabur, one of India's largest Ayurvedic formulation manufacturers, has now ventured into modern pharmaceutical research and product development. Dabur recently announced that it had perfected a method to extract taxol -- a potent drug used to treat ovarian …
