Using cell phones to broadcast text messages reminding health workers in Kenya how to treat children’s malaria increased the number of cases handled correctly, a study has found. The study by researchers from Oxford and the Kenya Medical Research Institute was published in The Lancet. It involved 119 health workers …
THE World Health Organization has raised alarm over leprosy spreading across India. With the disease infecting about 120,000 people every year, the country is now the biggest contributor to the global leprosy burden, the UN body said in a press release. The Union health ministry had declared the disease, which …
Recent headlines worldwide reported the US government’s use of a fake vaccination programme in Pakistan for counter-terrorism purposes. Whether the story is true or not, the damage is already done once there is the slightest suspicion that a medical activity like a vaccination campaign may have a motive other than …
The Planning Commission of India has set up a working group to look into the drug regulatory mechanism in the country. One of the tasks the panel has been entrusted is to devise a strategy to weed out irrational drugs from the market. Most of these drugs are fixed dose …
The government’s ambitious mission to control diabetes has made a reluctant start. Worse, it suffers from lack of planning. The project was launched as part of the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS). The first phase of the diabetes control project started …
Three out of every five surgeries in three private hospitals in a Rajasthan town over the past six months were hysterectomies. After an RTI application revealed the scandal—the hysterectomies were unnecessary and conducted for money—the story took a dramatic downturn on the ethical scale: doctors of the three hospitals went …
THE Uttar Pradesh government has issued show-cause notices to about 150 surgeons for not performing any surgery in the past three months. Most surgeons who received the notices were from Allahabad, Sitapur and Kanpur. The state has set a target of at least 50 surgeries a month for all government …
The National Health Policy (NIH), 2002 envisages that keeping in mind the availability and spread of allopathic graduates in their jurisdiction, state governments would consider the need for expanding the pool of medical practitioners to include a cadre of licentiates of medical practice, as also practitioners of Indian systems of …
The lack of skilled service providers in rural areas of India has emerged as the most important constraint in achieving universal health care. India has about 1.4 million medical practitioners, 74% of whom live in urban areas where they serve only 28% of the population, while the rural population remains …
In 1947, a Boston shipyard worker’s child fell sick. Examining the twoyear- old’s blood through the microscope, Sydney Farber, a city doctor, saw billions of malignant white cells “dividing in frenzy, their chromosomes condensing and uncondensing, like tiny clenched and unclenched fists.” The child was suffering from leukaemia and by …
The union health ministry is finalising the national antibiotics policy to check indiscriminate use of drugs. The move comes close on the heels of the detection of multi-drug resistant bacteria, dubbed superbug, in foreign patients who underwent treatment in India and Pakistan; it was reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases …
David Henry discusses a research article by Geoffrey Spurling and colleagues that examined the relationship between exposure to promotional material from pharmaceutical companies and the quality, quantity, and cost of prescribing. Original Source
In an ideal market economy competition lowers prices of consumer goods. It is just the opposite in the case of pharmaceutical products. More expensive brands sell more. Take Cyclovir, an ointment for treating skin infection caused by herpes. Its therapy cost (cost of one course) is Rs 812, while a …
Patients visiting public health centres in Nagaur district in central Rajasthan these days rarely buy branded drugs. Doctors direct them to the government- run generic medicine stores (GMS) where quality drugs are available at low cost. The district administration of Nagaur has managed to free the public health system from …
Bindeshwari, a scrap dealer in Punjab’s Ludhiana district, was asked to buy Cefzy-250 by the doctor treating his wife. She had delivered a baby in the government civil hospital in June-end. The chemist at the hospital’s Jan Aushadhi Store gave Bindeshwari Ceftazidime, a generic version of Cefzy- 250; both drugs …
The Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1992 attempted to curb the efforts of baby food manufacturers to undermine breastfeeding and was further amended in 2003 to plug loopholes. However, public-private health partnerships are now found to be advocating nutrition policies …
