It is no secret that India is home to an ageing population. This World Senior Citizens Day, it is worth taking a breath to appraise the health of our seniors and to consider how the pandemic has affected them. As of 2019, older persons – those aged sixty or over – number at 139 million […]
Medicine and Research
Transplant waiting list only gets longer
For many, life continues to be hard as they wait on the organ donation transplant waiting list. Not being able to access a life-saving organ transplant is not the case the entirety of the time. The family of a brain-dead man in Maharashtra gave doctors the go-ahead to donate his organs, offering hope to patients […]
Global health today: Tedros, COVID in Indonesia, and a million more COVID cases by 2022?
This is the first in a series of newsletters, offering the expert insight of Lalita Panicker – consulting editor, views, Hindustan Times, New Delhi – into some of the most pressing health issues of the day. Another term for Tedros? To use a well-worn cliché, the Director-General (DG) of the World Health Organization (WHO) is […]
Air quality standards to be rethought next year
India is to review its air quality standards next year, addressing an environmental and public health issue of significant concern. New national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) are likely, reports indicate. Discussions are said to be considering ultra-fine particulate matter (PM0.1), smaller than fine particulate matter or PM 2.5 which denotes particular matter of 2.5 […]
Vaccine drive crosses 55 crore, unused doses remain
According to a provisional report, India’s vaccine drive surpassed the milestone of administering 55 crore and set a record in the last 24 hours. However, many vaccine doses provided to states and union territories remain unused. The past 24 hours saw 88.13 lakh doses administered, taking the cumulative number of shots in arms to 554,730,609 […]
100 million more? Stark warning on fresh COVID-19 cases
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), issued a frank and alarming warning about the potential for fresh COVID-19 cases to exceed 100 million by early 2022 – taking the total caseload to 300 million and counting. His warning came just a week after the global case count surpassed 200 million, […]
Five kidneys after third kidney transplant
The Madras Medical Mission College in the Tamil Nadu state capital Chennai performed a kidney transplant for a 41-year-old man – the third time he has undergone such a procedure. Reports indicate that the man, who is said by surgeons to be recovering well, experienced kidney failure aged twelve and subsequently underwent his first kidney […]
TB-free India: Mandaviya reaffirms commitment
This week, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya restated the Government’s commitment to working towards a TB-free India by 2025. How plausible is this ambition? “[The] Government and people will work together to make India TB-Free by 2025,” the Minister told lawmakers in the Rajya Sabha. He emphasised the need to raise awareness of tuberculosis as […]
Air pollution and dementia, an ominous link
According to an elongated study conducted at the University of Washington, air pollution raises the risks of dementia, lending fears that the bulk of India’s population could be rendered far more prone to developing the condition. The study used data from two long running datasets — one that began in the late 1970s charting air […]
AMR: The silent, parallel pandemic
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a “silent pandemic”, commentators argue, as experts argue for a harmonised approach to mitigate the damage. The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed substantially to the AMR crisis, with the prescription of antibiotics for the treatment of those affected by COVID-19 contributing to an increase in AMR cases. This is a […]