The pentavalent vaccine has been recommended for national scale-up in India. It was first introduced in two states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, in 2011 as part of the national vaccination programme. The vaccine has so far made its way to seven more states. India has the highest infant and child under 5 mortality rate in […]
Category: South Asia
Anne Winter: The drive for universal health coverage
In 2000, the whole of sub Saharan Africa had fewer telephone lines than Manhattan, and less than 3% of rural villages had access to land line telephones. Six years later, 45% had GSM coverage and connectivity is now a given across the continent. So it may be with healthcare. As momentum gathers around efforts to […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—16 December 2013
NEJM 12 Dec 2013 Vol 369 2283 This week most of the NEJM is taken up with trials of genotyping to guide starting doses of vitamin K antagonists. Fair enough: this is a common clinical problem, and warfarin initiation is an important test case for genotyping as the gateway to personalised therapeutics. Dosing people with […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—9 December 2013
NEJM 5 Dec 2013 Vol 369 2183 Respect: this trial collected nearly a thousand patients who survived out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and ended up in one of 36 intensive care units spread across Europe and Australia. They were then randomised to treatment involving hypothermia to 33 deg celsius—as recommended by current guidelines—or without hypothermia. This logistic […]
Richard Smith: Can the Grand Convergence replace the MDGs?
The Grand Convergence is the Big Idea of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health. It is the idea that by 2035 the poor world could have similar mortality to the rich world. Is it achievable? Can it bring the “fractious global health community” together into one aim to replace the Millennium Development Goals? The […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—2 December 2013
NEJM 28 Nov 2013 Vol 369 2083 I like it that the NEJM has chosen to start this week’s firework show with a dud. Stand ready to be awed and deafened by the Mighty Thunderboosh! Pssh, sputter, pop. Sorry folks, that was it. So rather than the vaccine that heralds the end of HIV, we […]
K Ganapathy: The rise of internet use and telehealth in India
“Making geography history,” “making distance meaningless,” “a hospital in your pocket,” “cost effective, need based healthcare for everyone, anytime, anywhere,” are all hyperbole—fertile imagination working overtime and hype. But is it possible that in my lifetime I may actually see this happen? Improbable, yes. Impossible, no. According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, […]
Alice James: Tackling tobacco temptation—why we need to target children
The most effective way we can reduce the global burden of smoking is to target young people. During the debate on standardised packaging of tobacco products, an initiative which has for now been stalled by the government, MP Bob Blackman stressed that, “Two thirds of current smokers began under the age of 18” and that […]
Gopi Gopinath: The future of India’s urban health
The healthcare scenario in India is one of the most serious concerns facing the nation today. Although globally India has earned a reputation for its inexpensive medical tourism (healthcare costs are 1/10 of the cost of the West), the country has serious problems attending to its own people. Out of all Indian citizens needing medical […]
Sandeep Kumar Panigrahi: Infectious disease surveillance in India
On the occasion of its Golden Jubilee, the Indian Academy of Paediatrics launched Project “Uday” (meaning Rising), which aims to develop an early warning system for paediatric diseases in India that can be prevented by vaccines. The project, which consists of a reporting system, also aims to generate data on the burden of vaccine preventable […]