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Every year  an estimated 1.2 million children under the age of five are killed by pneumonia. It accounts for 18 per cent of all such deaths and is believed to be  the single largest killer of infants. The second most common cause of bacterial pneumonia is  haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) , which can be prevented […]

There has been weeks of coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision on the evergreening of the Novartis patent (including this good wrap-up piece in the US magazine, the Atlantic). A provocative post by the excellent Prashant Reddy on the ever-thoughtful Spicy IP blog today says that the part of India’s patent law which tripped up

The Swiss company, Novartis AG has been fighting since 2006 to win a patent for Glivec a cancer drug, the plea for which today was rejected by the Indian Supreme Court. According to the law,   section Section 3(d) bars companies from making minor changes in existing patented drugs to keep extending the patent, a concept known as

This is the kind of in-depth, on-the-ground reporting that few newspapers can afford. The Hindu looks at how the public health system fails the poorest pregnant women in Thane, just next to Mumbai. Reporters actually question where some of the failures happen and why. For example, scans are so difficult to come by in part

There is a very thoughtful piece in Open Magazine on the problems of using herbal and ayurvedic medicines in the modern age. In many sectors, these medicines take the lion’s share of the market for treatment of many diseases in India — it is a Rs 8,000 crore a year market (over $1 billion). But

There’s a fascinating NY Times blog interview today with USAid administrator, Rajiv Shah. The future of USAid involvement with India is, he thinks, nothing like the past. “We focus on using our India mission as a development innovation laboratory to try and find those partners in the private sector, scientists and entrepreneurs who are creating

The Wall Street Journal has developed an obsession with TB in India. It is an important subject but enough to justify five big articles in the last year? The most recent (from yesterday) is again severely critical of the Government of India. The gist of the WSJ allegations is that Government is dragging its feet rather than

The current Tehelka carries a very simplistic piece on encephalitis deaths (for example, “immunoglobulin — a drug that cures encephalitis”) but it’s encouraging to see a spate of media pieces on deaths caused by infectious disease in India. There was a more thoughtful piece after last year’s monsoon season in the Wall Street Journal (reprinted in

This long piece from Open Magazinesuggests that foreign donors may have too much influence over India’s think tanks. Most of the article is not about health but it has this to say, “In the field of health policy, one of the most influential thinktanks is the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Since it was

Zee News  and other outlets report a new global burden of disease study that shows India lagging well behind other Asian countries on key health parameters. Life expectancy at birth in India was 58.3 in 1990; it went up to 65.2 in 2010 but the comparable figures for Bangladesh were a jump from 58.9 to 69 years