Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of conditions that affect more than a billion people worldwide. With India bearing one of the heaviest burdens of NTDs in the world (58% of leprosy cases, 40% of lymphatic filariasis cases, and 34% of cases of dengue fever), it needs to give them their due share […]
Category: South Asia
Andrew Jenkinson: The Indian rural surgeon
I pinch my patient’s abdomen with toothed forceps to check his spinal anaesthesia has worked and I feel I should pinch myself. I am about to start an inguinal hernia repair using a sterilised mosquito net. After completing my foundation training, I was keen to work abroad. I had a simple set of criteria: a […]
Madhukar Pai and Nimalan Arinaminpathy: How can India overcome tuberculosis?
India reports more cases of tuberculosis than any other country. This much is well known. However, nobody quite knows the true magnitude of the TB problem in the country. For one, we do not know the number of TB patients who do not seek care or who remain undiagnosed, but we refer to this often […]
Pradip Kharya: Delhi’s chikungunya outbreak
In 2006 India experienced one of its worse chikungunya outbreaks, when more than 1.5m cases were reported. The current outbreak in Delhi has claimed at least 15 lives so far, and the city’s hospitals are overloaded because of demand from neighbouring states such as Rajsthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana. […]
Soham D Bhaduri: How we can improve the specialty status of family medicine in India
A few weeks ago I was interviewing Dr Ashoka Prasad, a psychiatrist and campaigner for improving the rights of those with mental illness, for a popular Indian medical news portal, and was grabbed by a point that he made. The interview was mainly about the state of mental healthcare in India, yet Prasad stressed the […]
Madhukar Pai: New insights into the tuberculosis problem in India’s private sector
As a result of the overuse or misuse of antibiotics, antimicrobial resistant superbugs represent an extraordinary threat to global health. This threat is particularly great in India, the world’s largest consumer of antibiotics and the country facing the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB) in the world. Two studies, published simultaneously in The Lancet Infectious Diseases this […]
Tanoubi Ngangom on India and Africa’s partnership for access to medicines
Prime Minister Modi’s recently concluded four-nation tour to Africa is primarily regarded as part of his larger energy diplomacy outreach. However, what is often overlooked are the enormous investment opportunities that African markets offer—especially in the midst of stagnating markets elsewhere. The agenda for this visit was centred on two themes: (a) mutual economic interests, […]
Madhukar Pai: How drug resistant TB can show the path to tackling antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health threat, and it is estimated that if we do not find solutions to tackle the rise of drug resistant pathogens, by 2050 10 million lives a year and a cumulative 100 trillion USD of economic output will be at risk. Since the introduction of antibiotics, microbes have evolved a variety of […]
Jane Parry: Without incentives, health data sharing systems don’t work for patients
In the multi-payer systems that characterize primary health care in Asia and the Pacific, both developed and developing countries suffer a way of delivering care that works against data sharing. Even in Hong Kong, China—which has one of the highest standards of health care in the region—services are rendered without a sharable electronic medical records […]
Soham D Bhaduri: The NEET-PG could be an opportunity to transform India’s medical education
The Indian government has seemingly assented to the NEET-PG (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Post Graduate) as a common exit cum entrance exam for those who’ve achieved their MBBS and want to begin practising medicine or continue with a postgraduate medical course, irrespective of whether they come from an Indian or foreign medical school. As has […]