The Bihar Health Department has issued the notification of Bihar Epidemic Diseases Covid-19 Rules 2023 regarding effective control over Bihar Epidemic Covid-19. In the new rules, the responsibility of all the hospitals from the state level to the district level has been fixed for its control. In the manual prepared …
A more proactive World Health Organization (WHO) seems to be in the offing. The Organi- zation intends to set up an earlywarning system El and a rapid reaction force to tackle epidemics. A section of the WHO is launchimg a global surveillance network of laboratories geared to focus on rare …
Among the oldest artefacts dating from the early days of the British Raj is a woodcut-print showing hectic (by the standards of the time) trading activity in the port city of Surat. Situated on the banks of the Tapi river in Gujarat, the city has always been an important one. …
Much before the spread of the plague there were warnings. Why did the country's health machinery fail to activate itself? Why did government agencies fail to coordinate after the outbreak? The situation could have been tackled since India has the capability in terms of scientists and laboratories. The whole thing …
IN THE closing days of last year, the ministry of health (MoH) did an acrobatic loop on the issue of national health management. A circular issued on December 28, 1994, now requires the ministerial vetting of all developmental projects with environmental, and hence health, implications. This is part of the …
ONE full month after the medieval scourge ran through India, Yersinia pestis, the plague bacillus, continues to elude the army of experts who toured the epidemic hit areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Experts have only been able to isolate "plague-like bacilli" during serological tests from the blood samples collected in …
IN ANCIENT times, it was seen as a curse from the gods. The Romans believed it to be a blast hurled down by one of their angered deities. In the 2nd century, at the height of the plague during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the toll is said to have …
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 …
MEDIEVAL afflictions were not restricted to Beed, Surat or other parts of India hit by the plague last fortnight. They showed up in the blinkered reception of the news in several supposedly informed quarters in the country, and other nations as well. Take the case of the mainstream Indian press. …
THE Love Canal study in New York forced the then American president, Jimmy Carter, to declare an emergency in the vicinity and cleared the way for relocating about 2,500 residents. The study revealed that there was a significant excess in the incidence of low birth weight among new-born infants from …
TRAFFIC cops in Ahmedabad run risk of cancer; Silicosis among refractory plant workers in Orissa; Radiation hazards haunt Geological Survey of India; Asthma in Rajasthan -- Ever wondered what runs common in these headlines? A close look will reveal the theme running through them -- the identification of a group …
HUSKIES will soon stop hauling sledges in the freezing reaches of Antarctica. In accordance with the Antarctic Treaty Environmental Protocol, sled dogs will be banned from the South Pole from April 1, 1994. They are being retired because they are spreading canine infection to seals, say environmentalists. The animals were …
MORE THAN 40 people have died of kala-azar and 120-odd people have been infected in Mahottari district of Nepal, close to the Indo-Nepal border, reports Jan Sarma for Panos Features. A shortage of insecticides has made it difficult to keep the virus at bay. In fact, in 1992-93, supplies were …
TWO US researchers say the cholera outbreak sweeping Bangladesh has assumed pandemic proportions and is part of a larger outbreak affecting India's eastern coast, reports The Lancet. The researchers say vaccines being developed against other cholera strains are unlikely to be effective against this strain, which originated in the region …
NEW STRAINS of diarrhoea, malaria and cholera are spreading rapidly in South Asia, adding to the burden of health care systems that are already stretched to breaking point. Scientists in Bangladesh say the new cholera bacterium, named vibrio non-01, has killed as many as 4,000 of 70,000 victims, mostly residents …
THE BRAZILIAN government swung into action recently to evict thousands of gold-panners from a 94,000- sq-kin Yanomami reserve near the Venezuelan border to save the 9,000 members of South America's largest Indian tribe from an outbreak of malaria. Thousands of panners who left the reserve to celebrate Carnival elsewhere are …
