Exclusive Interview with Professor Jacob John Section A. On Health in India Q1.According to you, what should be the top three health priorities in India? According to me there are two: First, disease priorities such as tuberculosis, metabolic diseases (diabetes and hypertension), and malignancies (cancers/leukaemias). Second, health management priorities: absence of formal public health, […]
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Is malaria eradication possible and desirable?
Yes, says a well-written piece in this edition of Lancet Global Health. There is, it argues, no realistic alternative: the parasites will become drug resistant and the vectors resistant to insecticides. The opinion piece is beautifully constructed but makes a few assertions that are far from self-evident: deployment of the current RTS,S vaccine (with efficacy […]
This year’s best writing on cancer among poor women in India … is from Forbes
India is full of newspaper columnists and entire magazines which devote themselves to pontificating on the wellbeing of the underprivileged. Vast think tanks get millions in funding to produce papers on the subject Yet, the best writing on cervical cancer among the women of India — the ones whose parents cannot afford a protective vaccine […]
Tamil Nadu receives global recognition for its low-cost health care model
According to this article, Tamil Nadu’s low-cost health care model has recently been applauded for reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality between 1980 and 2005. Before 1980, 44 newborn babies out of every thousand child births died in India. In twenty five years, Tamil Nadu reduced it by 60 per cent, while the national average […]
Weakness in US complaints to India over intellectual property safeguards?
Swaraj Paul Barooah has written some pieces that are very critical of some of the recent Indian court decisions on pricing of medicines an on intellectual policy. He is no reliable friend of weak Ip protection but this morning on the Spicy IP blog, he uses all of his formidable legal mind to tear apart […]
India’s medical colleges are producing quacks say ex-Secretary Health
The woman who used to be India’s most senior health bureaucrat is clearly not planning on a quiet retirement. In the latest of her highly controversial opinion pieces for The Hindu, Sujatha Rao says that, “many medical colleges are producing quacks. The tragedy is that we all know about it.” The former Secretary Health & […]
What are the keys to economic growth? Chaos, confusion and mistakes
It’s widely held that China’s ability to invest strategically in pharmaceuticals and vaccines will give it an edge over India in both over the long term. Thus far, though, India’s industry has prospered more. A fascinating article in the New Yorker profiles an economist who would have expected this. The shortest line between two points was, […]
Innovative intervention program improves life for rural women in India living with HIV/AIDS
There is an article on Health Canal (an online Health newswire / Medical Research News wire service provider) that talks about a pilot intervention program to assist women with HIV/AIDS. Multidisciplinary teams of researchers from UCLA and India initiated a new intervention program, in which ‘lay women’ in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh were […]
India overtakes China as most populous country by 2028: UN
The Economist does it usual shilly-shallying in reporting the latest UN World Population Prospects, focussing (as it always does) on the ageing of the population rather than on the massive social, environmental and security challenges posed by a global population of over 10 billion. Even The Economist, though, can only bury the real story so far: […]
Multinational pharma goes on the offensive against Indian generics
In the wake of the Ranbaxy scandals (see this earlier post), multinational pharma is predicting doom for India’s generics industry. This well-written piece by former Canadian politician (and former PhRMA staffer) Chris Ward comes from the latest Pharmaceutical Executive. You would not expect Ward to take a charitable view but he gives a foretaste of […]