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. …
AMERICAN doctors are waving their scalpels against Hillary Clinton, head of the presidential task force on health. The American Medical Association, which fears that investments made in specialised training and equipment by physicians would be devalued if Hillary's proposed health care reforms come into force, has contended that the practice …
TRADITIONALLY, Indian women have played the role of health care providers. But the reality of their own health is quite a different matter. Adverse sex ratios, higher rates of malnutrition and lower hospital admissions among women in India stand as a sad testimony to the state of their health care. …
Centre for Health Education, Training and Nutrition Awareness Lilavatiben, Lalbhais Bungalow Civil Campus Road, Shahi Bagh Ahmedabad 380 004 Women's Health Forum 839, 23rd Main 10th Cross J P Nagar 2nd Phase Bangalore 644 963 Indira Kapoor Family Welfare Training and Research Centre 332 Sardar V P Road Bombay 400 …
THE WORLD Health Organisation asked governments and other groups at the Ninth International AIDS Conference held in Berlin in June, to provide it with $2.5 billion annually, to combat the AIDS epidemic and save 10 million people all over the world this decade. The World Bank also endorsed the plan, …
THE NUMBER of people in Bombay who are infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus- 1 (HIV-1) are increasing at an alarming rate, says a recent study (The National Medical Journal Of India, Vol 6, No 1). H A Kamat and D D Banker of Bombay's Sir Hurkisondas Nurrotumdas Hospital, …
A NEW COMPUTER voice synthesiser for people with speech disorders uses a rapid text facility that enables the users to conduct a near normal conversation and, more crucially, to alter. its speech mode to reflect their mood (Spectrum, No 233). Developed by scientists at Dundee University in Scotland, the system …
FOR CHEMIST Andrea Stierle, it was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. She was scouring the ancient cedar forests in Montana, USA, for a fungus that produces a compound called taxol, which is used to treat ovarian cancer. And find it she did, though she herself had …
A NEW strain of cholera bacteria -- Vibrio cholerae non-01 -- that scientists say was earlier associated only with sporadic diarrhoea cases, has invaded India and Bangladesh. The killer microbe has already claimed more than 1,000 lives in the Indian subcontinent. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are the worst-hit in …
FIVE-DAY-OLD Andrew Gobea became the first newborn to undergo gene therapy when surgeons at a Los Angeles hospital injected him recently with gene-altered cells obtained from his mother's placental blood to cure a usually fatal defect in his immune system. Andrew suffers from bubbly bay disease and lacks an enzyme …
FOR 11 years now in Bangladesh, transnational pharmaceutical firms have been squeezed out of the market because of a drug policy that has kept down prices of medicines, increased their production and encouraged the local drug industry. But the big firms looking for big bucks may be back if the …
THE FIRST patient of the day at M A Muttalib's clinic in Dhaka is a 6-year-old boy. After asking the boy's mother a few questions, Muttalib prescribes medicine for a parasitic and then comments, "The child goes back into the same unsanitary environment and becomes re-infected. Within six months, he'll …
BANGLADESH'S national drug policy is based on the essential drugs concept propounded by the World Health Organisation (WHO). It says that drugs that satisfy the health needs of the majority of the population should be available at affordable prices at all times in the right dosage. Since 1977, WHO has …
A premature death seems in store for the "cradle baby scheme" launched with much fanfare by Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha last October, following reports of female infanticide in Salem. This is because between March 23 and April 24, of the 51 babies cared for under the scheme at the …
What was it that led you to abandon a lucrative career abroad and return to your country? Was it your rural roots? No, though I was born on December 27, 1941, in Uttarpara village of Chittagong district, I had hardly any rural connections. I was schooled in Calcutta, then at …
ALARMED by spiralling health care costs, the Japanese government is taking steps to wean the public away from its tendency to reach for a variety of pills at the slightest cough or shiver. The Japanese are the biggest spenders on drugs in the world, with a per capita expenditure of …
AS HEAD of the President's task force on national health-care reform in USA, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, has her job cut out for her. A majority of Americans want quality health care at a lower cost, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, and they …
A RURAL health programme operating arolmd Sevagram in Maharashtra has given new expression to Mahatma Gandhi's dream of rural development. The scheme, based on self-help and risk-sharing through insurance, is proof that quality health care can be provided in rural areas at an affordable cost. The moving force behind the …
HIROSHI Nakajima, newly re-elected director general of the World Health Organisation, could face a demand for his resignation at WHO's annual assembly in May in Geneva, unless allegations of financial irregularities are resolved. Nakajima won a hard-fought campaign in January for a second five-year term. Eighteen of WHO's 31-member executive …
The Union and Madhya Pradesh governments have been ruled culpable by a Rome-based tribunal of violating the rights of the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy. The Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT) based its ruling on hearings conducted in October 1992 in Bhopal. The PPT ruling noted the failure of industry …
AT 3JAMAKUthe daughter of Laxman Meena of Khodi Mahogodi village in Udaipur districtwas the youngest dracontiasis -- a disease caused by guinea worms (Dracunculus medinensis) -- patient in Rajasthan. She was cured last year by a surgical technique developed by an ayurvedic team led by Bhanwar Lal Sharma and sponsored …
