Two separate, yet related events spell good news for children under five in India. The first is the news that over five million children have been vaccinated in just over a year with the five-in-one pentavalent vaccine as part of routine immunisation in six states in India. Besides offering protection against diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough […]
Tackling the threats of pneumonia and diarrhoea Read More »
Today carried a Wall Street Journal article which rings many alarm bells on India’s new strategy for dealing with TB resistant to most antibiotics treatment. The WSJ has run a series of articles on this subject over the past year but this is a new claim: that India’s emergency strategy is now “encouraging TB to instead
Is India’s new approach to TB “complete nonsense”? Read More »
It’s fashionable to moan about health never figuring on India’s political agenda. As we have suggested before in this blog, that may be changing. There is now a big, heavy duty argument involving philosophy, economics, ideology and all of the other components of a true political discussion. This article from Outlook is a well-written, if
Big questions about health turn political in India Read More »
In a hard-hitting op-ed this week in The Hindu, former Health Secretary Sujatha Rao bemoans “the absence of a well thought out policy framework for strengthening the health system.” She accuses her former political masters of “knee-jerk solutions and unintelligent tinkering” and the states of responsibility for ineffective insurance schemes: “new dimensions of fraudulent and
Has India’s public health system collapsed? Read More »
Old allegations in the USA have been give new life in India (see this from today’s DNA, for example for a particularly egregious example of unsubstantiated scare stories). However, new data from the US suggest that the HPV vaccine has the same levels of side effects as a placebo. It is beautifully presented in this
Is the HPV vaccine safe? Read More »
The Hindu today reports that the Human Rights Law Network has brought a petition before the Supreme Court which effectively seeks to block access to HPV vaccines in both the private and the public sector in India. The petition may or may not get very far but it may cause yet another delay in Indians
Radical lawyers’network sues to block HPV vaccines in India Read More »
The continued use of oral polio vaccine (OPV), whatever its scientific merits, is high-risk in communications terms. This is because OPV can cause paralysis like that caused by polio (although most cases of paralysis are unrelated to OPV). All developed countries now use inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) which does not carry the risk of transmitting
The worst story about polio immunisation may be lurking Read More »
More than a million people die of Malaria every year, many of them children in Africa. In this context, the results of a Phase III malaria vaccine trial, which was testing the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing clinical and severe malaria in infants aged 6-12 weeks, are highly disappointing. While vector control and sanitation
Disappointing malaria vaccine trial results Read More »
An interesting but worrying report from the BBC on drug trials on marginalised populations in the country. Particularly terrifying hear about sufferers of the Bhopal gas tragedy becoming victims yet again. More here.
Have India’s poor become human guinea pigs? BBC News Read More »
To add to the growing fears of the possibility of a global pandemic after bird flu and mad cow disease scares in China and Britain, Kerala now joins the list having issued a bird flu alert recently following the outbreak of avian influenza in one of the government farms. A complete ban has been announced
Bird flu alert in Kerala Read More »