Order of the Supreme Court of India in the matter of Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS & Others Vs Union of India & Others dated 24/02/2025. The Supreme Court (SC), February 24, 2025 has directed all states to file their affidavits addressing concerns raised about antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs …
AIDS is a a disease that has no cure and this is forcing health workers to seek effective ways to prevent its spread. The experiences of the decade since the discovery of AIDS indicate strategies to change social attitudes and behaviour have limited the spread of the disease. Many grassroots …
TUBERCULOSIS, the number one killer in India -- two million cases of active TB are diagnosed each year -- and the AIDS epidemic are showing a disturbing tendency of coalescing and infecting the same individual (WorldAIDS, No 23). The risk groups of both diseases overlap in many countries in the …
DOCTORS in Africa are debating whether severely anaemic children should be given blood transfusions because of the risk of their getting AIDS-infected blood. Researchers, however, have found ways to reduce the frequency of transfusions by 55 per cent without increasing mortality (The Lancet, Vol 340 No 8818). Severely anaemic children …
A BRITISH laboratory and a US firm are collaborating to produce artificial blood after scientists overcame two obstacles that had hampered this effort. Attempts to use haemoglobin isolated from the red blood cells as "artificial" blood failed because it caused kidney damage and was unable to give up oxygen -- …
ANJANI KHANNA HYDERABAD & S GOPIKRISHNA WARRIER MADRAS INDUSTRIAL giants across India are taking a keen interest in neem. ITC, a major cigarette manufacturer, has found that neem extracts are extremely effective against the dreaded tobacco mosaic virus and the tobacco caterpillar moth (Spodoptera litura) which can extensively damage tobacco …
Pesticides 1. Wellgro, produced by India Tobacco Company, reportedly repels tobacco caterpillar, prevents the spread of tobacco mosaic virus and prevents nitrogen leaching. 2. Neemguard, marketed by Gharda Chemicals, Bombay. Recommended by the company for use on cotton, groundnut, pulses, rice, vegetables, fruit trees and plantation crops. 3. Neemark, marketed …
While growing up in Rajasthan, Deepak Bhatnagar often saw his parents using neem leaves to keep insects out of the wheat they stored in their home. He also saw how well the leaves worked against skin infections when they cured a persistent ulcer on his leg -- one that had …
NOW THAT "neemania" has gripped scientists in the West and neem (Azadirachta indica) is being hailed as the wonder tree that can solve global problems from locust swarms to AIDS, Indian scientists are jumping onto the bandwagon. And, after Western scientists proved neem-based pesticides are safer than synthetic ones such …
THE EXACT origin of neem is uncertain, but today it is found almost everywhere in the tropical belt. Some say neem is native to the entire Indian subcontinent, but others expand this to dry forest areas throughout south and southeast Asia, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Indian …
THE VILLAGE midwife's claims have been substantiated by recent scientific research on the contraceptive qualities of neem. "The ancient Ayurvedic treatises indicate neem was used to induce abortions," says M R Unniyal, assistant director at the Central Council for Research in Ayurveda and Siddha in Delhi. Today, scientists at the …
AIDS HAS claimed another victim -- this time one who is serving a four-year prison sentence after paying 500,000 franc (Rs 3.1 lakh) fine. The trial on a charge of distributing HIV-tainted blood through the French National Blood Transfusion Centre in 1985, ended with the centre's director, Michel Garretta, the …
THE CONCEPT that caring for AIDS patients in their homes because it is both medically sound and basically humane is being carried out quite successfully since the late 1980 in African countries such as Uganda and Zambia. In the health-care programmes of these countries, the aim is to provide a …
FLIP-CHART presentations, rock concerts and relaxed Sunday-morning conversations at a Madras street corner or over a cup of tea on the highway are some of the strategies being used by concerned volunteers in Tamil Nadu to educate high-risk groups on the steps they must take to avoid contracting AIDS. The …
THE MOST significant case on an issue of scientific integrity in recent times, that of AIDS researcher Robert Gallo, has yet to be settled. The Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) cleared Gallo of misdemeanour early this year, (Down To Earth, July 31). Now, …
THE EIGHTH international conference on AIDS "will be sadly remembered for the change in venue from Boston to Amsterdam, necessitated by the discriminatory travel restrictions still in place in the USA". This rueful comment was made at the opening session by Michael Merson, director of WHO's global programme on AIDS, …
RESEARCHERS at the conference were divided over the dramatic disclosure of a disease similar to AIDS, which does not arise from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This raised a debate on whether this was a new disease or had resulted from an HIV mutant. The virus responsible for this disease …
UGANDA, Rwanda, Brazil and Thailand have been identified by the World Health Organisation as testing sites whenever an AIDS vaccine is ready. So far, only Uganda has agreed to the proposed large-scale trials though responses from the other countries are still awaited. India refused to provide a testing site for …
WAS ROBERT C Gallo guilty, along with his colleagues at the US National Institute of Health, of scientific misconduct for their conduct and reporting of the crucial experiments that led to the development of a diagnostic blood test for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS? No, says the NIH finally, …
"IF the HIV virus spreads through the general population in India, it will be through blood and not, sexual transmission." says P N Talwar, director of the National Institute of Immunology. However, according to the new strategy document of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Global Programme on AIDS (GPA), while …
BIOTECHNOLOGY was the fastest growing area of scientific research in the 1980s, followed by anaesthesia and intensive care in medicine, says a report published by the Institute for Scientific Information. The report has based its conclusion on the number of papers published in each field. The number of papers in …
