Medical technology is a vital component of healthcare delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored this. In this exclusive interview, I speak with Pavan Choudary – the chairman of the Medical Technology Association of India – about the importance of medical technology during this pandemic. You can watch our interview here. For more of Health Issues India’s interviews with […]
Science and Technology
Oxygen shortages: Health Ministry issues denial, says there is a surplus
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said there are no medical oxygen shortages in the country. Reports of oxygen shortages in the country have surfaced in recent weeks. Al Jazeera reports that multiple states severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh, have witnessed a threefold increase in […]
Ewing sarcoma: Hope in Guwahati?
Reports suggest that children afflicted by Ewing sarcoma in the Dr B. Borooah Cancer Institute (BBCI) in Guwahati – Assam’s largest city – show a five-year survival rate of sixty percent. Ewing sarcoma, as explained by Johns Hopkins, “is cancer that occurs primarily in the bone or soft tissue. While Ewing sarcoma can develop in […]
Lightning strikes: An underreported crisis
A popular adage, if not cliché, is that lightning never strikes in the same place twice. However, in India, lightning strikes are increasing. Experts pinpoint climate change as the cause. An IndiaSpend analysis published earlier this week highlighted the issue. The report notes that the last four months alone have seen more than 200 deaths […]
COVID-19 tests: How reliable are they?
Tuesday saw Indian conduct nearly nine lakh (900,000) COVID-19 tests, reports indicate – but how reliable is India’s testing infrastructure? The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare claims that India conducted 899,000 COVID-19 tests on August 18th. However, Our World in Data puts the number of tests lower, at 818,212. Sushma Dey reported for […]
PandemiCast XIV: Why we need to pay attention to telehealth and telemedicine
In the latest edition of PandemiCast, we discuss telehealth and telemedicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth and telemedicine are gaining much traction as healthcare providers the world over innovate to ensure continuity of care. In a discussion moderated by Mark Chataway, we speak with Gil Bashe of Finn Partners; Abi Gleek of Every1Mobile; and Abhijeet […]
COVID crisis: The situation worsens
Ever since India passed the grim milestone of surpassing one million COVID-19 cases, the country’s COVID crisis shows no sign of abating. Sunday saw yet another record breached. The number of new reported cases of COVID-19 – the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), or simply the coronavirus – numbered at […]
Infodemiology: Fighting the fake news epidemic
The discipline of infodemiology is accruing heightened attention during the COVID-19 pandemic – and for good reason. In an event as deadly as the COVID-19 outbreak, there can be no underestimation of the grave risk misinformation poses, nor can we afford to downplay the necessity of proactively working to mitigate the so-called ‘infodemic’. This was […]
One million: COVID-19 in India
India has surpassed a grim milestone. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country thus far now exceed one million. At the time of publishing, confirmed cases of COVID-19 – the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), often simply referred to as the coronavirus – now number 1,010,250. Surpassing one million cases […]
Hunger: A global – and Indian – crisis
“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” I used this quote from Mahatma Gandhi to preface an article published in 2017, focused on the crisis of hunger and malnutrition – one borne by India at virtually all levels of society and one […]