HOME
Category: Discussions
April 01, 2000
Although the false incidence (children born with neural tube defects or NTD) and true incidence (foetuses with NTD) of spina bifida is on the decline in the developed world, the same cannot be said of spina bifida in developing countries. In a country like India, the socioeconomic consequences of...
April 01, 2000
Multidrug resistant infections are on the increase and include common community-acquired infections such as typhoid, malaria and tuberculosis. Multidrug resistant typhoid fever assumed epidemic proportions in the country some years ago, initially catching physicians unawares. As the epidemic wors...
April 01, 2000
Medical ethics is a code of behaviour accepted voluntarily by the medical profession. Unfortunately, unlike other countries where the respective national medical associations lay down various codes of conduct and enforce them on their members, in our country, medical councils, both national and s...
April 01, 2000
Intersex cases are rare, and even medical personnel may not fully understand the finer nuances, implications and complexities of such cases. The arrival of a newborn is a highly emotional event in our country, and gender plays a key role. The birth of a boy is greeted with great enthusiasm. Not o...
January 01, 2000
The national immunisation schedule includes BCG, DPT, oral polio and measles vaccines, besides DT and TT. Many more vaccines are now freely available in the country. The immunisation committee of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics has considered most of these vaccines 'optional' and not included t...
January 01, 2000
The current claims of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier rate in India are highly exaggerated, unscientific and misleading. A series of errors is being made in estimating the burden of HBV disease and its significance. These errrors must be corrected, and we must scientifically assess the burden of ...
January 01, 2000
For more than eight years, we have been involved in a massive field-based comparative leprosy vaccine trial in Tamil Nadu, covering some 300,000 people. The study is supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research. The trial was launched in January 1991, and the study protocol was approved sh...
January 01, 2000
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimated at the end of 1998 that around 33.4 million people were living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection all over the world, over 90% of them in developing countries. However, in developing countries, promising newer therap...
January 01, 2000
Rabies continues to be a major problem in India even as we enter the 21st century without clear national policies for its control, in contrast to the progress made by most other countries in Asia. It is believed that more than 50 per cent of all rabies cases worldwide occur in India. Our neglect ...
January 01, 2000
Vaccines are commonly invoked in discussions of public health policies since prevention is always felt to be better than cure, and since recent success stories of disease eradication or control such as smallpox are ascribed to vaccine use. New vaccine research is therefore a major component of ma...