Indian Health Care Sector

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IndraD
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by IndraD »

NMC bill appears to be a case poorly communicated to the people thanks to lacklustre health minister! Here is a pov in defence of bridging course. Parliamentary standing committee has asked Dr Devi Shetty & others to help.
https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.c ... medicines/

Homeopaths undergo a five and a half year, full time, undergraduate course in India. They are trained in every subject that a student of allopathy is taught except pharmacology. This includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology, gynaecology, obstetrics and internal medicine. The students use the same textbooks, the syllabi for these subjects are the same, and the time allotted for these to be taught is also almost the same as the MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) syllabus.

In universities where both MBBS and BHMS (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery) courses are taught students may often share lecture halls for common lectures. The faculty is often the same! As in the MBBS course, the students must complete a rotational internship. This includes six months at a regular hospital.

There are concerns that homeopaths may not be able to interpret modern investigations and diagnostic tests. These concerns are entirely unfounded. Homeopaths all over the country are using modern diagnostic techniques to assess outcomes of their treatment. Patients themselves are doing this! It is ludicrous to suggest that a homeopath is unable to interpret diagnostic test results because of an inherent and insurmountable lack of understanding.

I have sat in rooms with various kinds of doctors, surgeons and paramedical personnel, in my undergraduate years, in my time as an MD-Homeopathy student, while reading for a post graduate degree at the University of Oxford, and in conferences in various parts of the world. I have sensed the scepticism in the room when i introduce myself many, many times.

No one, however, has ever managed to arrive at the conclusion that i will simply not understand what is being taught or said because i am a homeopath. This seems to be the presumption being made by those opposed to the proposed bridge course. In the absence of details of the specific nature of this course, how is it being opposed, if not for this reason? When the training of both allopathic and homeopathic courses is so similar, i fail to understand the logic to this opposition.

The most facile argument concerns the dual registration of homeopaths in another national register once they complete the bridge course. Apparently, this is ‘neither permissible nor open’. I’m not sure what this means but maintaining a register of homeopaths who have completed the bridge course seems to be both ‘possible’ and ‘not a big deal’ to me.

It is time that the opponents relax this perceived sanctity around the medical profession and become more sensitive to the healthcare needs of India. There are large parts of the country where no medical practitioner is present, and none are willing to go. This is despite changes in regulations like making rural internships compulsory and enforcing of bonds for graduates of government colleges, preventing their departure from the country. Homeopaths are well positioned to shoulder the disease burden of the nation. Only in India, because of the stellar training provided to homeopaths, is such a move even possible.

If providing a bridge course can make them better equipped to handle at least some illnesses that they couldn’t earlier and spread healthcare services to far flung areas of the country, what can possibly be the problem? If ignorance of the structure and scope of the training of a homeopath was the problem, i hope this has helped. If prejudice is the problem, the nation will do well to rise above it.
csubash
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by csubash »

Again an ingenious way of dumbing down a science subject. If Ayush doctors want to practice allopathy why read alternate medicine in first place? Why there has to be NEET for MBBS alone? If you think the private medical colleges are bad the Ayush colleges (both Govt & Pvt) are significantly worse. If you want healthcare taken to periphery then why not train nurses, midwives & pharmacists with a bridge course - nurses & clinical pharmacists read significant amount of anatomy, physiology & clinical science.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by shiv »

Folks here is my take on the NMC bill:
Why I support the National Medical Commission Bill
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by shiv »

This is an emotive subject but I have expressed my views from time to time in other forums as well. Modern medical care is good but it is not going anywhere fast, it is too expensive for the world and certainly for India and it will never ever cover the entire population.

Modern "allopathy" or western medicine which I practice every day of my life and have done so for the last 40 years is very very effective and definitely the best over a limited (I would say 50-60%) of health needs of a population. People hate this figure - but whichever way you cut the cake modern medicine ain't evah going to help 100% of people.

So what does modern medicine excel at?

1. Mechanical problems:
  • Blocked artery in the heart:we can unblock it
    Hole in muscle causing hernia: We can seal it
    Clot in brain endangering life: We can evacuate it
    Broken bone may kill you or put you out of action for long: we can fix it quick and better than nature
    Dirty lens in eye: We can replace it
    Rusty painful joint: We can replace it
    Abnormal blocked birth canal threatening mum and child: we can save both
    No baby? Sperm not reaching egg: we can get the two to mate
    Can't pee because of blocked prostate: we can core out the channel
    Stone in gall bladder, bile duct or kidney: we can extract/remove them
2. Infections:
  • 1. We prevent killer infections Tetanus, Diphtheria, Polio, Whooping cough, Influenza, Hepatitis, Typhoid etc by vaccination
    2. We kill infections using custom-designed anti-infection chemical medicines (anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-protozoal)
3. Critical care/life saving:
  • 1. Losing blood: transfusion. Coming soon: artificial blood
    2. Can't breathe: unblock pipe, give oxygen, use artificial lung
    3. Kidneys dying: dialysis/kidney transplant
    4. Heart dying: drugs, mechanical support, artificial heart, heart transplant
    6. Liver dying: Liver transplant
    7.Short of hormones? Diabetic? We'll replace them
4. Quality of life:
  • 1. Dietetics
    2. Lifestyle advice

What modern medicine has done is:
  • 1. To make humans as a whole much more healthy than earlier
    2. To make humans live much longer than earlier
    3. To make humans much fatter than before
    4. To damage the environment in favour of human health and comfort
What modern medicine has not done: What modern medicine has done is to pull people back from death and cause people who would otherwise be dead to live. But humans continue to have a large number of niggling problems that modern medicine has no cure for. Most of these niggling issues are considered too minor to require attention by allopathic doctors. No research money goes into such conditions and since these conditions do not threaten life, modern medicine is not interested. It is in these areas that traditional medicine scores. There areas that involve lifestyle advice and dietary advice that modern medicine does not even recognize as valid but people do get relief from indigenous/alternative medical therapy. But allopathic science is too cocky and self centered to accept that.

We fill the cities with hi funda specialists who cannot offer holistic treatment. The cardiologist fills his patient up with drugs that keep the patient alive but leave him with him all sorts other symptoms for which he has to seek treatment from other specialists who simply fill him up with more ineffective medicines. Many of these people either move away to alternative medicine or seek to do that but are scared. There is a definite role for alternative therapies in India because Indians live by indigenous beliefs and do not accept allopathic solutions easily.

We need a huge change..It will be painful. I hate to say it - but as I enter my 5th decade of medical practice I see the cocky addiction to allopathy alone as one limb of our mental colonization. Allopathy is good - but not complete and if we are scientists we must keep an open mind to what we cannot do and what have have not been doing.
csubash
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by csubash »

Shivji,
With due respect to your experience, while scrapping MCI & bringing in NMC is a welcome move, the bridge course for alternate medicine will be disastrous for medical care. Have you seen any of these of homeopathy or other colleges - to call them a medical college is an insult to homeopathy, unani, ayurveda or siddha. These don't even have patients or basic infrastucture. This move will kill ayurveda & siddha - why teach these if you are going to practice allopathy. Have you seen any qualified siddha or ayurveda doctor in a village? The biggest killer in small villages are maternal mortality, diarrheal or respiratory infections, poisoning, trauma, etc which alternate medicine has nothing to offer. If you really want to take medicine to smaller villages educate nurses, midwifes, pharmacists rather than a bridge course.
arshyam
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by arshyam »

Why is a system far older than "modern medicine" called "alternative" medicine? No one I know calls Ayurveda or Siddha as "alternate", but then, these are ordinary people with ordinary problems.

Ayurveda and Siddha are good from a preventive healthcare PoV, in which India hasn't invested much. There was an article a while ago about how the diagnostic healthcare stream gets a lot of money and attention, but the preventive aspect, which could solve issues like diarrhoea, languishes. In that sense, some of the policies like Swacch Bharat will aid preventive care, as will increased number of general practitioners in rural areas, which, in today's medical industry is a problem. I do share csubash's concern about sustain the Ayush streams - the bridge course if done incorrectly could end up harming the Ayush streams, as MBBS has a more attractive ring to it, being "non-alternate", "modern", and all that.

Anyway, here's the TN model on preventive health, and the national policy I think is loosely based on it:
http://www.rediff.com/money/column/colu ... 091224.htm
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 680691.cms
IndraD
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by IndraD »

Delhi pvt hospitals maybe asked to cut profit margins, give drugs from govt list
Private hospitals should only prescribe from the list of 376 drugs on the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), and not charge a premium of more than 15% over market rates on diagnostic tests they conduct, according to the nine-member committee set up by the Delhi government to formulate norms for the profit margins of private hospitals.

The committee, headed by Delhi’s director general of health services, was formed in December after reports of medical negligence at Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh and overcharging at Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI), Gurgaon, put the spotlight on over-billing at private hospitals.

For drugs and consumables not on the National List of Essential Medicines, the committee recommended that private hospitals be allowed to charge a profit of not more than 50% on the procurement price. Hospitals procure drugs and consumables at a fraction of the maximum retail price (MRP), often as little as 20-30% of the printed price.

“This will make a huge difference. The drug price control orders fix the rates of NLEM drugs by calculating a market average of the selling price of drugs in a particular category, ensuring some profit for manufacturers but not too much,” said Professor Vijay Bhalla, director, SGT College of Pharmacy, Gurgaon.

“Many pharmaceutical companies create irrational drug combinations just to get out of the NLEM list; this removes the cap on pricing and allows them to fix high MRPs,” he added.

The committee has asked Delhi government to ensure that the NLEM drugs are also available at pharmacies. “As profit margins on NLEM drugs are lower, pharmaceutical companies often do not push these medicines in the market,” said Dr Arun Gupta, president of the Delhi Medical Council, and one of the members of the committee.

The committee found that drugs and investigations constitute 50-60% of a bill at the hospital, so these were the areas on which we focussed,” he added.

Among the recommendations is that the charges for diagnostic tests done within hospitals must not exceed their costs at stand alone labs by more than 10-15%.


“People visiting hospital out-patient departments have the option of getting investigations done from other labs, but patients who have been admitted have to get tested in the hospital. We have recommended that the cost of the tests should be comparable,” said Dr Gupta.

Apart from the drugs and investigations, the committee also examined fixed “packages” offered by hospitals for various surgeries and procedures. “Often, the bill exceeds the prices mentioned in the packages by a huge margin, so we have suggested that the prices should vary not more than 10%,” said Dr Gupta.
spl insurance to come as well which will cover potential complications cost. Eg a patient coming with pneumonia with spl insurance cover will be treated for empyema should it develop in course of treatment. If true good initiative by Kejriwal govt

http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-new ... ePkcI.html
IndraD
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by IndraD »

Excellent article by Devi Shetty https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.c ... -services/
Served by Indians: For India to be a services superpower, diversify beyond IT to medical services
Contrary to popular perception, the health sector at $8 trillion is the world’s largest industry (IT is $3.4 trillion, oil $2 trillion, automobiles $2 trillion). In the US and UK the health sector is the largest employment generator today. UK’s National Health Service is the world’s fifth largest employer.

India needs two million nurses and the rest of the world nine million. The nursing profession is not attracting talent in India because of lack of career progression. In the US 67% of anaesthetic procedures are done by nurse-anaesthetists. In India a nurse who has worked in intensive care for 20 years is legally not allowed to prescribe even a pain killer. A 25-year-old nurse intensivist can easily earn a lakh rupees a month in India. All it requires is regulatory changes to make healthcare delivery inclusive and not the exclusive domain of doctors.

According to the World Bank there will be a demand for 80.2 million health workers across the world in just 13 years. Healthcare jobs are not attractive for people from wealthy countries. We should train rural youth to become doctors, nurses and paramedics for the world. There are 45,000 doctors and nurses from Cuba working in Central America earning about $8 billion a year. Philippines receives $29.7 billion in remittances, mostly from its 1,50,000 nurses and 18,000 physicians working abroad.

We should convert 600 district hospitals as medical nursing and paramedical schools to train 5 million doctors, nurses and paramedics for the global requirement. They can remit about $100 billion of precious foreign currency every year over a period of time. It doesn’t cost Rs 400 crore to build modern medical schools. There are 35 medical schools in the Caribbean region training doctors for the US. These medical schools occupy about 50,000 sq ft rented space in shopping malls, where most of the teaching is done by Indians.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by jaysimha »

https://community.data.gov.in/stateut-w ... g-2015-16/

State/UT-wise percentage of Men & Women Tobacco Users (age 15-49 years) during 2015-16

Punjab lowest..........may be because Sikh community bans tobacco usage.
great keep it Down ( not up)..
IndraD
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by IndraD »

Health care input from Budget 2018:

- http://www.thehindu.com/business/budget ... 618631.ece
Under the programme, Mr. Jaitley announced a new flagship National Health Protection Scheme, providing a health insurance cover of ₹5 lakh a family per annum. The scheme will cover 10 crore vulnerable families, with approximately 50 crore beneficiaries.

- allocation Rs 600 crore for nutritional support to TB patients in India: The plan is to reduce the incidence of TB from 217 new cases per 100,000 in 2015 to fewer than 44 new cases by 2025. As part of this plan, funding for TB prevention and care doubled from $280 million in 2016 to $525 million in 2017.
In HIV infected patients in India TB is the biggest killer

- Rs 600 to each TB patient monthly

-a medical college for Every 3 MP constitutional area

-new health centres to come up in thousands
Varoon Shekhar
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cit ... 351718.cms

Oh good stuff, what is 3 doctors dying in a road accident, India has so many doctors and so many people. And one of the best doctor to patient ratios on earth-not. Sorry, feeling really disgusted right now. The frequency of this garbage...
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Vips »

The making of an Indian Brain Template.

At the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) here, a group of scientists is preparing a one-of-its-kind database of brain images that, when compiled together, could result in a so-called Indian Brain Template (IBT).

This archetype, to be constructed from a composite of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans from 150 adult Indians, will likely include at least one person from every State and Union Territory, and serve as a guide to neuroscientists and surgeons, who have so far based their knowledge of intricate brain anatomy on Caucasian models.

Significant variations
Over the years, scientists from across the world have been pointing out that there are significant variations in the location of key brain regions and the density of neurons in various brain areas between racial types.

Drawing from this, several countries, including China, South Korea and Canada, have brain templates of their population and it is time, say researchers, that India had one of its own, too.

“There are variations in the size, volume and location of certain brain regions in Indian populations compared to, say, the Canadians,” said Pravat Mandal, a neuroscientist and project leader at the National Brain Research Centre here.

A tough job
Of the 150 healthy participants that they hope to recruit over the year, “about 40%,” according to Dr. Mandal’s estimates, are expected to be scanned at the NBRC in the next two months.

“It’s a tough job recruiting and cajoling participants to spend 10 minutes inside an MRI scanner, which is about the time required for a detailed scan,” he added.

By way of comparison, China’s template rests on a bank of about 1,000 volunteers and the Canadian template (called the Montreal Neurological Institute template and a key reference point in the field) is built on about 300 healthy volunteers.

The IBT is funded by the Department of Science and Technology. While other research groups in India have attempted similar databases, none have aspired to the geographical and chronological spread of participants envisaged by Professor Mandal’s initiative.

Naren Rao, a neuropsychiatrist at the Bengaluru-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), and his colleagues had embarked on building an IBT. They, however, had only 27 recruits, all from Aurangabad and this was, said Dr. Rao, “due to logistical challenges.”

In that study of 17 men and 10 women — all certified as mentally fit by a neuropsychiatrist — it emerged that Indian brains “significantly differed” in length and width, but not in their height, from Caucasian brains, according to a 2016 report in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a peer-reviewed journal. “They were smaller but that doesn’t mean Indians have lesser intelligence,” Dr. Rao clarified to The Hindu in a phone conversation.

While the comparison of brain sizes among people of various ethnicities was an obsession of the 19th century physiology, contemporary researchers are keener on variations in the innards of the brain and whether it could hold clues to neuropsychiatric diseases.

Dr. Mandal, who has completed a few scans in the course of the IBT project, said that while it’s early to say if there’s anything typical about Indian brains, a key factor that he will be looking out for is the quantity of a molecule called glutathione, an antioxidant known to help repair cell damage. Dr. Mandal avers that reduced glutathione concentrations in the parietal cortical region — near the back of the brain near where the skull bulges — may help predict Alzheimer’s disease.

“We will be looking at glutathione concentrations and how they vary with age in the people we study,” he added. The other outstanding question, said Dr. Rao, would be to establish if the brain variation within Indians, given the country’s complex history of migrations, was greater than among other countries.
JayS
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by JayS »

arshyam wrote:Why is a system far older than "modern medicine" called "alternative" medicine? No one I know calls Ayurveda or Siddha as "alternate", but then, these are ordinary people with ordinary problems.
Western universalism. Anything western is main stream, anything else is alternative or native or other such adjective. Or perhaps arrogant Science..? Only I am right attitude.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by IndraD »

NEET exam turns into farce: For an MBBS seat, you need just 5% in physics, 20% in biology https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... IIndiaNews
With just 5% marks in physics, less than 10% in chemistry, and 20-odd per cent in the biology section of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), candidates have got admission to medical colleges in the past two years. This was made possible by the “percentile” system under NEET that was supposed to keep non-meritorious students out.
Before NEET was made mandatory in 2016, the cut-offs for admission were 50% marks for the general category, and 40% for the reserved categories. From the 2016 admission year, these were changed to 50th and 40th percentile, respectively, opening the doors to candidates with just 18-20% marks in the NEET aggregate.
Here’s how it happened. In 2015, you needed 50% marks for admission in the general category, so you would have had to score at least 360 out of 720 marks. But in 2016 you only needed to be in the 50th percentile, which meant scoring 145 out of 720, or barely 20%.

The reserved categories needed to be in the 40th percentile, which translated to 118 out of 720, or 16.3% marks. In 2017, this fell further to 131 marks (18.3%) for the general category, and 107 marks (14.8%) for the reserved seats.
This year’s NEET exams, to be held next month, continue with the same percentile cut-offs, so students with less than 20% marks in the entrance exam may be admitted to MBBS courses again.
Percentile measures the proportion of candidates, not scores. Thus, 50th percentile means students with more marks than the bottom half, 90th percentile comprises students with more marks than the bottom 90%, and so on. It does not mean they have 90% marks.
The percentile system not only made low-scoring students eligible to study medicine, it actually got them seats in colleges. TOI found that in 2016, general category students with just 148 marks, or 20.6%, in NEET were admitted to a private college in Uttar Pradesh which is a deemed university. As many as 30 of the 100 students this institution admitted had less than 25% marks in NEET. A Puducherry college admitted 14 students with less than 21% marks, the lowest being 20.1%. Some students admitted in the reserved categories had even lower marks.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by vijayk »

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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Vips »

Medical tourism can be the next big export earner.

Last month the Association of American Medical Colleges issued a sobering report: The US could see a shortage of up to 120,000 physicians by 2030. While the reasons are largely demographic — the over-65 age group is expected to increase by 50 per cent by then — America is also a victim of its own policy choices.

The American healthcare industry is gigantic, so vast, that at an annual spend of $3.5 trillion, it is one-and-a-half times larger than India’s GDP. Healthcare spending is further expected to grow at 5.3 per cent in 2018. Such high growth rates are unsustainable in the long run. Because of doctor shortages, an explosion in the number of sick people and illegal immigrants demanding care, waits to see a doctor are long, almost as bad as in Canada or in the UK. Most consumers are simply frustrated with America’s healthcare system. If India Inc can innovate just like Nasscom did in the 1990s, India’s health services sector can grab a portion of the American market by offering world class medical tourism services to American patients. Even a 5 per cent slice can result in a $175 billion export industry, much larger than our IT services sector today. (And this is just taking into consideration the American market, if you add Western Europe and other markets, the size and value would easily double)

American healthcare policy debacles have been many and create a perfect opportunity for Indian companies to exploit. Consider Obamacare. By imposing on insurance companies to offer mandatory benefits such as maternity care and mental health services to everyone — and removing price differentials for those with pre-existing medical conditions — the government sent the private health insurance market into a tailspin. Double digit premium increases are now an annual occurrence. Deductibles and co-payments are unreasonably high. There just aren’t enough healthy people in the system, so the insurance market is already in the dreaded “death spiral” as more big insurance companies simply withdraw from the Obamacare marketplace.

Americans would warmly respond to visiting India to get treated for non-life threatening ailments — such as knee and hip replacement surgery — and life-saving preventive care, such as stents and balloon angioplasty. Americans already have the highest regard for Indian doctors who have earned a reputation for outstanding clinical skills and bedside manners. The big issues are that America perceives India’s hospital infrastructure and service quality levels to be poor — and these are legitimate concerns.

But we’ve been here before. In the mid-1990s, most Americans never thought we had the internet bandwidth, the reliability of electrical power, workplace comfort for IT staff and building security in our development centres to offer global technology services. Today, Nasscom companies in India operate world-class centres which have become the world’s envy.

To be sure, India does have a thriving medical tourism industry catering largely to private-pay patients from Asia but the few players who offer this service are all fragmented. For India to become truly successful though, the hospital sector should borrow from Nasscom’s playbook to invest, train and scale both in quantity and quality.

Just like the IT industry offers technology parks with five-star hotels within them to cater to visiting foreign business people, the medical tourism sector has to build world-class hospitals, staffed and dedicated to foreign patients.

Customer acquisition should start in the US. The industry should establish primary care clinics in America to refer patients to India, for free. It should offer a one-stop service, soup to nuts — travel, accommodation, cashless direct billing, 24x7 customer service and post-hospital care — all coordinated through a single portal or call centre. Arriving patients should be met at the airport by a full-time adviser who stays with the patient until departure, much like a conducted tour manager. Top quality health care requires abundant (perhaps even redundant) labour and India offers a competitive advantage here. And India has the advantage of being able to recruit English-speaking workers for the entire experience. Post-surgical rehabilitation could include camps at yoga, meditation and balanced-diet clinics, already respected as Indian exports in many parts of the US. Nasscom companies could provide the industry with the required technology and business transformation expertise to make the whole process work like a well-oiled machine.The cost arbitrage factor, however, is the real selling point for America’s insurance companies. Total knee replacement in the US retails for about $50,000, compared to about $3,000 in India. Outsourcing medical care may be the only way for America to control runaway health sector costs.

India is already a powerhouse in the production and distribution of the world’s generic drugs such as for controlling hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Expanding the medical tourism industry is a natural byproduct of our pharma industry’s success. But doing so should become a concerted public-private partnership where careful planning and world-class execution are vital.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Vasu »

India ranks 145th among 195 countries in healthcare access, quality
India ranks 145th among 195 countries in terms of quality and accessibility of healthcare, behind its neighbours like China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, according to a Lancet study.

The Global Burden of Disease study, however, mentioned that India has seen improvements in healthcare access and quality since 1990. In 2016, India’s healthcare access and quality scored at 41.2 (up from 24.7 in 1990).

“Although India’s improvements on the (healthcare access and quality) HAQ index hastened from 2000 to 2016, the gap between the country’s highest and lowest scores widened (23·4-point difference in 1990, and 30·8-point difference in 2016),” the study stated.

It said that Goa and Kerala had the highest scores in 2016, each exceeding 60 points, whereas Assam and Uttar Pradesh had the lowest, each below 40.

According to the study, India performed poorly in tackling cases of tuberculosis, rheumatic heart diseases, Ischaemic heart diseases, stroke, testicular cancer, colon cancer and chronic kidney disease among others.

For the first time, the study also analysed healthcare access and quality between regions within seven countries: Brazil, China, England, India, Japan, Mexico, and the US.

The study found that China and India had the widest disparities in healthcare access and quality with 43.5 and 30.8 point differences, respectively. Japan had the narrowest differences with 4.8 points.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Suraj »

Maternal mortality rate down 22% between 2014 and 2016
The number of women who die during childbirth in India has come down sharply, with more women now delivering children in hospitals.

The maternal mortality rate (MMR) , according to the sample registration system (SRS) data released by the office of Registrar General of India on Wednesday declined to 130 in 2014-16 from 167 in 2011-13 — a significant improvement on a parameter widely used by analysts and developmental economists to rate a country’s progress.

MMR is defined as the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The 22% reduction in MMR since 2013 means nearly one thousand fewer women now die of pregnancy-related complications each month in India.

The Union health ministry is attributing this improvement mainly to rise in institutional deliveries across the country.

“This is a great achievement for us and a major contributing factor is that almost 80% of women are now giving birth in hospitals, both public and private. If you look at decade-old numbers, the percentage was just about 40%,” says Dr Ajay Khera, deputy commissioner, child health, health ministry.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by sanjaykumar »

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article ... -surgeries

This is concerning, health care for Kenyans, even wealthy ones, seems lacking in basic diagnostics let alone treatment.
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Post by Vasu »

Can Indu Bhushan deliver PM Modi’s promise of healthcare?
But occupying his desk and mindspace today is a large, poster-size checklist of states and Union Territories that the Centre is targeting for Ayushman Bharat — National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM) – the world’s largest sponsored healthcare insurance scheme that aims to provide 10 crore of India’s poorest families with health insurance of Rs 5 lakh each per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.

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For the world’s largest democracy of 1.3 billion, where over 70% of the population has had no significant insurance coverage and has been spending out of pocket for medical care, the sheer ambition and audacity of AB-NHPM, or Modicare, will eclipse all social welfare programmes, as well as subsume the existing Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), launched in 2008 by the UPA government.

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Till date, Bhushan has managed to bring on board 28 of the total 36 states and UTs, including some ruled by the opposition. The likes of TDP-led Andhra Pradesh or Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal had initially declined participation, claiming it would be a “waste” of state resources.

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Some states are yet to complete the tendering process for insurance companies and hospital empanelment while BJP-ruled Maharashtra sent a letter declaring “inprinciple” agreement to participate in the scheme, just hours before Independence Day. An official memorandum of understanding (MoU) is expected in a week’s time, say government sources.

Seven states, including Tamil Nadu and Kerala, are yet to agree to implement ABNHPM, and Odisha is its fiercest critic.

Most already have existing health cover schemes for a much larger universe of beneficiaries than what the Centre is willing to provide under Ayushman Bharat.

Even their annual cover is far higher than what has been envisaged under Modicare. Integrating them with the Centre’s will, therefore, burden the state exchequers even more as costs may rise significantly to cover those beneficiaries left out of their own scheme.

Senior government officials remain hopeful that at least five states that are holding out — Telengana, Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — will sign agreements in the next 30 days.

Their inputs have already been implemented on ground. Telengana’s IT architecture for its Arogyashree health scheme is getting replicated nationally under AB-NHPM.

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As per the government’s own admission in March, inpatient hospitalisation costs have risen 300% over the past 10 years and an estimated six million families are knocked back into poverty every year by a medical crisis.

Over 50% of households either don’t use or don’t have access to government facilities, says Crisil research, as India only has 0.8 physicians per 1,000 people, one of the lowest ratios in the world. India is at least 75% short of the number of qualified doctors it needs.

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......around 80% of the poor’s acute medical needs at the primary level are “overwhelmingly” met by unqualified medical practitioners, highlights Shailaja Chandra, former secretary in the health ministry.

The low reimbursement rates –20-25% lower than even Central government health schemes — for hospitals for some critical procedures has also irked service providers. AB-NHPM is expected to contribute 30-40% of the actual cost of hospital operations and, in its present form, may not encourage private hospitals to expand to underserved areas, according to the Association of Healthcare Providers India (AHPI).

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Post by Suraj »

India improves: Infant mortality dips to world average; Modi’s Swachh Bharat tackling common causes of death
In a good news, India’s infant mortality rate dropped to 32 for every 1,000 live births in 2017 from 34 in 2016, according to a report by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME). In absolute numbers, this translates to 8,02,000 infant deaths in 2017 compared to 8,67,000 infant deaths in 2016. However, infant deaths in India continue to remain the highest in the world. “India continues to show impressive decline in child deaths, with its share of global under-five deaths for the first time equalling its share of childbirths,” Yasmin Ali Haque, Representative, UNICEF India, said.

The major reasons behind these deaths were lack of access to water, sanitation, proper nutrition and basic health services, the report said. The Modi government is currently working on various programmes on santionation, health and nutrition. In his recent Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had referred to a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which had praised government’s ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ saying India could avert three lakh deaths provided there is 100 percent implementation of the cleanliness drive by October 2019.

In the year 2016, India’s infant mortality rate was 44 per 1,000 live births. India reported the highest number of infant deaths followed by Nigeria at 4,66,000, Pakistan 3,30,000 and Democratic Republic of Congo 2,33,000 (DRC), the report said.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

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Post by SaiK »

This is good, and nice to hear.. but q: what about skull growth? how long this can last?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 141216.cms
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Post by Jayram »

This heart drug breakthru is big news for the world. Recent large scale outcome trials of a Fish oil derived drug called Vascepa has provided potential for paradigm shifting results in world of Heart Health. Very good news for those on Statins this drug has been proven to reduce Cardio Vascular hard outcomes by 20% on top of Statin therapy. Statins like lipitor were big break thru drugs to cut CV risk by 25% since there were first introduced in 1990 good but not complete reduction right. This is the first drug that further reduces that risk by a further 31% in overall CV outcomes and 20% in hard outcomes (ie leading to death).

The detailed results came out Nov 10 at the American Cardio Association meeting. The lead investigator was Dr Deepak Bhatt from Harvard. There was some motivated controversy on the placebo used, by journalists, but that has been strongly refuted by the Drs involved. Additional benefits - This drug is cheaper and since naturally extracted has minimal side effects and is orally administered. I put this this here because of some members here are on statins who can benefit now and the potential for life changing in India (with its high incidence of CV symptoms) in the near future. For those in the US talk to your Dr about this to get yourself and/or your parents covered.

NEJM article here https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1812792
Company press release here https://globenewswire.com/news-release/ ... on-in.html
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Post by Suraj »

Modi’s vaccination drive one of the world’s best; to feature in top 12 practices in prestigious journal
The Narendra Modi-led government’s vaccination programme Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) is one of the 12 best practices from around the world to be featured in a special issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) next month. The special issue is being brought out on the occasion of the fourth Partners’ Forum conference on infant and maternal health. PM Modi will deliver the keynote address at the conference, to be held in New Delhi on December 12-13.

IMI was launched by PM Modi in October last year. The special drive aims to cover every child in the country under the age of two years as well as pregnant women, who have been left uncovered under the routine immunisation program. Its special focus is on improving immunisation in cities and districts with low immunisation rates, in order to ensure full immunisation to over 90% by the end of December 2018. In all, the vaccination scheme covers 173 districts and 17 cities across the country.
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Post by Vips »

Seated 32 km away, city doctor fixes woman's heart.

An Ahmedabad doctor created history by performing the world’s first-in-human telerobotic coronary intervention on Wednesday. Chief interventional cardiologist Tejas Patel of Apex Heart Institute performed percutaneous coronary intervention on his patient, who was in a catherization laboratory at his hospital in Ahmedabad, from Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, roughly 32 km away.

The Padma Shri awardee used CorPath GRX, a vascular robotic system developed by US-based Corindus installed at his hospital, to carry out the angioplasty. His patient was a middleaged woman who suffered a heart attack some days ago. “We inserted a stent in one of her arteries the regular way. When we told her about the telerobotic technology, she volunteered for the procedure,” said Dr Patel, refusing to divulge any more information about her identity citing “patient-doctor confidentiality”.

Dr Sanjay Shah partnered Dr Patel by attending to the patient at the hospital. The robotic system was placed in the operation theatre and Dr Patel was connected to it through high-speed wireless internet. Moving the buttons from the temple, the patient’s arteries were cleaned and a stent was inserted.

After successfully performing the surgery, Dr Patel — a pioneer of transradial coronary intervention (technique of performing angioplasty through the wrist) — said, “This procedure can can change the scenario of medical practice internationally. With this technology of distant stenting, we began with a distance of 32 km but we will soon be able to treat patients that are 300 or 3,000 km away. This technology will help cover remote areas and cut down on time spent in a hospital.”

Explaining the rigorous procedure they underwent before implementing the system, Dr Tejas Patel said, “We first tested the system on simulators at varying speeds. After achieving success, we along with a host of professors carried out studies on animal at the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester. We have also got approval from the ethics committee of our institute and notified the Drug Controller General of India (which monitors clinical trials). We have not circumvented any regulations.”

When asked about the cost of the procedure, Dr Patel said, “The technology is in its initial phase. Eventually, like most other technology, it will become affordable. As this is a pioneering procedure, we haven’t charged anything yet.” The surgery was conducted on internet with speed of 100 mbps. According to Dr Patel, the surgery could have even been conducted if internet speed was 20 mbps.

“This will transform the entire vascular space. It has the capability of changing the lives of millions of people living in rural areas,” he said, adding, “It will also eliminate hurdles caused by geographic location, socio-economic status, and rapidly reducing number of skilled specialists in accessing timely, specialised cardiovascular care.”

With experience of over 90,000 cath lab procedures, Dr Tejas Patel is a pioneer of transradial cardiac intervention. He received the Padma Shri in 2015 for his contribution to medical field. In 2005, he was conferred Dr B C Roy Award, India’s highest in field of medicine, and Dr K M Sharan Cardiology Exellence award for his pioneering work. He has written 2 books and trained over 5,000 cardiologists across the globe.

Robotic system
· Apex Heart Institute is first facility outside US to introduce robotic procedures for heart
· Robotic stenting is said to provide accuracy of sub-1 mm, against human surgeon’s 5-10 mm
· The system comprises 3 parts: a cath lab-integrated robotic arm, a cockpit from where the cardiologist commands robot through a joystick, and a replaceable cassette, which carries clinical materials
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Post by Vips »

Now, a portable ventilator for just Rs 35,000! AIIMS team develops low cost life-saving device.

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The device automatically detects breathing pattern. If there is a problem, it has a feature to alert the attendant/s.

A neurosurgeon and a robotics engineer from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have given people who need ventilator support, for different reasons, hope and respite from hefty bills. They have developed an advanced portable ventilator which is equipped with a tablet and will cost ten to twenty times lower than those available in the market.

According to a report in the Indian Express, AIIMS is the first medical institute in the national capital to successfully use it on patients. “This ventilator’s home version will cost patients around Rs 35,000 as they don’t need a tablet. They can connect it on their android phones. The family of a patient is being trained on how to use it and they are excited to take the patient back home,” Dr Deepak Aggarwal, co-inventor of the device and professor of neurosciences at AIIMS was quoted as saying by IE.

The report adds that the device runs on minimum electricity. Its power requirement is equivalent that of just two tube lights, i.e. 100 watts. Talking to Indian Express, Professor Diwakar Vaish, co-inventor of the ventilator and robotics scientist said, “These ventilators can run without the help of any special technician”.

The patient-friendly, portable ventilator has a shape like that of a bluetooth speaker. The device automatically detects breathing pattern. If there is a problem, it has a feature to alert the attendant/s. Cost of the advanced version of this portable ventilator starts from Rs 45,000. It has a fixed tablet displaying vitals such as pulse, blood pressure, etc. The device will also help hospitals and medical institutes meet the shortage of beds. Many patients who are on ventilators continue to stay in hospitals because their families cannot afford a traditional life-saving ventilator for home.

India already has the Portable low cost ECG machine (GE India),the low cost portable X Ray machine and now this.
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Post by Haresh »

Healthcare to get $100bn boost as India aims to cut maternal deaths
Spending on health will double by 2025, with India intent on improving its record on mortality of mothers and infants

https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... nal-deaths
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The untold story of how India's sex workers prevented an Aids epidemic.
In 2002, a major report predicted an Aids catastrophe in India. The country would have 20-25m Aids cases by 2010. People were being infected at the rate of about 1,000 a day. Aids orphans numbered 2 million. This scourge would ravage families, society, and the economy. India was going to be the Aids capital of the world.

But 2010 came and went. India averted an Aids epidemic. That victory – India’s biggest public health achievement – has remained uncelebrated. But a new book by one of the major HIV campaigners of that time finally honours the people he says were crucial in guiding India away from its seemingly inescapable destiny: the country’s sex workers.

Ashok Alexander spent a decade at the helm of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s campaign against HIV. In his book, A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India’s Sex Workers, he says the miracle would never have happened without the cooperation of sex workers.

Alexander, 64, was born into India’s elite. His father, PC Alexander, was principal secretary to Indira Gandhi. In leaving his career as senior director in the India office of McKinsey & Company to join the campaign to stop the spread of HIV, Alexander swapped a life of plush boardrooms and fine dining with CEOs for sitting on mud floors with sex workers, gay and transgender people and intravenous drug users. In short, a world of which he had little knowledge.

His account begins with his first day in the field, walking through a park in Vizag, in south India, in pitch darkness. As they navigated around couples having sex on the grass or behind the bushes, a local NGO worker urged: “Please don’t step on the people having sex.”

This was where sex work took place in India – in parks, at bus stops, on street corners. The fact that brothels accounted for only 7% of sex work presented a fundamental difficulty for the success of Avahan, as the foundation’s programme was called. How do you contain an epidemic in a setting where women are not clustered in one place, but dispersed and on the move? Where sex workers on the highways would get picked up by truckers then, when finished, cross the road to return on another truck?

Inevitably, a lot of data crunching and analysis had to happen – about which sex workers worked where, for how long, at what risk, and with how many customers – and this was entrusted to impoverished sex workers. They could have refused, but took on the task.

Tackling fatalism, an aspect of the national psyche, was harder. This quality can be seen every day on India’s roads, where drivers burst on to highways in the path of oncoming traffic without looking right or left. As one trucker told Alexander: “HIV might kill us in 10 years but this truck might kill us the next minute.”

Add the poverty, helplessness and lack of choice facing sex workers to this inherent fatalism, and the risk of catching the virus from unprotected sex seems remote and hypothetical compared with the brutal reality of survival. “You are telling me that if I get HIV I will die in 10 years’ time. But sir, 10 years is a lifetime for me. I have other, more serious things to worry about now,” said Theny, 25, a street-based sex worker.

Simple things often worked beautifully. At the outset, Alexander had no idea that a safe place to sit for a few hours, away from the violence of boyfriends, pimps, and police, could be so important. Avahan opened drop-in centres where, from 1-4 pm, they could unwind, have a hot shower and rest on a mattress on the floor. There was also the chance to be checked for sexually transmitted infection by a doctor without fear of being identified and stigmatised. For Avahan, the centres were a way of collecting the women in one place to be able to give them the information, support and condoms they needed.

As a former management consultant who has guided corporate executives on leadership qualities, Alexander couldn’t help but notice that the women – who gradually became his friends and colleagues – had these skills in abundance. In fact, he places sex workers a notch above business leaders on account of the sheer range of their skills. They are excellent judges of character and tough negotiators. Every day, they courageously battle emotional, financial and health crises while simultaneously keeping violence at bay.

Avahan scaled up with striking speed. It had a presence in 550 towns in just two years; within three, it had become the world’s largest privately sponsored HIV prevention programme.

But before scaling up, Alexander had to figure out the solutions. That required understanding sex workers’ lives and why they took the risks they did. Helpful here was the willingness of sex workers to mobilise as a community. The women knew what was best for them. All Alexander had to do, as he says, was tap into “the strength inherent in even the most marginalised of people if they are enabled to come together in a common cause”.

At the height of Avahan’s activities, Alexander and his teams were providing HIV prevention services to more than 270,000 sex workers, working in 672 towns, and distributing over 13m condoms a month. The programme, which cost $375m (£297m), is credited with an important role in the subsequent decline in India’s HIV status. Today, 2.1 million Indians are living with HIV. The prevalence of HIV is 0.22%, lower than that of the US.

The reason India’s sex workers never been praised for their contribution to this achievement, says Alexander, is that this was a success story no one wanted to author: “Their selfless contribution will never be recognised because of the stigma that still surrounds this disease.”
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Post by Neshant »

Interesting that leading too "clean" of a lifestyle makes childen vulnerable to immune system issues like Leukemia.

Leukemia is far less prevalent in poor countries compared to rich countries.

---------------------------------

‘For 30 years I’ve been obsessed by why children get leukaemia. Now we have an answer’
Mel Greaves has a simple goal in life. He is trying to create a yoghurt-like drink that would stop children from developing leukaemia.

“The aim is to find six or maybe 10 species of microbes that are best able to restore a child’s microbiome to a healthy level. This cocktail of microbes would be given, not as a pill, but perhaps as yoghurt-like drink to very young children.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... st-disease
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Post by Aarvee »

Not surprising sir. Here is another example.

https://www.nextnature.net/2014/01/how- ... -us-polio/
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Neshant »

Aarvee wrote:Not surprising sir. Here is another example.

https://www.nextnature.net/2014/01/how- ... -us-polio/
I've wondered as to the health benefits of probiotic drinks.

It supposedly prevents a host of adverse health issues related to an unbalanced gut micro flora.

Although how consuming a load of lacto bacillous strains of bacteria "balances" the microflora I don't understand.


How does this differ from eating dahi?

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Post by Aarvee »

Neshant wrote: I've wondered as to the health benefits of probiotic drinks.

It supposedly prevents a host of adverse health issues related to an unbalanced gut micro flora.

Although how consuming a load of lacto bacillous strains of bacteria "balances" the microflora I don't understand.


How does this differ from eating dahi?
The commercial products are "scientifically" designed and produced. The number and type of bacteria are controlled. Whether the selected type and number of bacteria are useful or not is another matter. I would think many of the consumer products available today are really of limited use.

Dahi is undefined. i.e. the components change from batch to batch and is also affected from incubation conditions, starter culture, amount of starter culture etc. It is mostly great. And most importantly it is/can be home made and accessible to most of the population.

Another case of western civilisation first mocking traditional ways but then following it later claiming it as their own :)
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India gears up for Rs 150 crore microbe project to uncover links to diseases.

India is getting ready for a project that is as small as it gets — and as big. The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) will map trillions upon trillions of microbes — bacteria, fungi, viruses, archaea — that are found in Indians. On their skin. In the dark depths of their guts. Swarming on every inch of their body.

In a one-of-a-kind project in the country, researchers will take skin and oral swabs and collect blood and faecal samples from 20,600 individuals who belong to 103 endogamous communities from (which marry within the group).

These will include 32 tribes as well — from Changpa in Ladkah to Warli in Maharashtra and Mankidia in Odisha, and from Ao in Nagaland to Koya in Telangana. After collecting the samples, scientists will sequence the genome of these microorganisms.

(These microbes are called human microbiota and their genetic material are collectively referred to as the human microbiome.) The
Union government-funded, Rs 150 crore project could get underway in the next few months, once the Department of Biotechnology
gives it the nod. It wants to map the microbiome composition of India’s different communities — and how genetics, diet and environment
impact it differently.

The ambitious project aims, at the end of it, to generate the baseline microbiome data of Indians. It will also define the core microbiome
of tribal populations that are unaffected by modern lifestyle. It will even help us understand the links between microbial composition and
disease risks and also create a repository of microbial samples from healthy individuals to help develop probiotic-like solutions.

The HMP is a collaborative effort between 11 research institutes and universities across the country, both public and private, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, the Insitute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology in Gu wahati and Symbiosis International University in Pune. The study is being led by Pune’s National Centre for Microbial Resource (NCMR), which is part of the National Centre for Cell Science.

“It’s a three-year project, but its repercussions will be there for many years to come,” says Yogesh Shouche, principal investigator at NCMR, in his office in Pune. Shouche, who has researched microbes for two decades, says this project is more challenging than similar projects in the West — for instance, in the US, Britain and European

Union. “Unlike in India, microbiome projects in the West work with genetically more homogenous populations whose dietary patterns are more or less uniform.” India’s diversity is staggering on many counts.

According to a study by the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani, near Kolkata, which is also involved in HMP, modern mainland Indians have descended from four ancestral populations — Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic — and not two as earlier estimated. Indians’ diets also vary.

For instance, according to a 2014 Union government survey, nearly 99% of Telangana’s population eat meat, while only a quarter of those in Rajasthan do so. A comparison of urban and rural populations in HMP will also yield insights into changes in microbiota, if any, from consumption of processed foods, which is higher in cities.

“It will be interesting to study the links between microbiota and environment and diets,” says Rakesh Sharma, senior principal scientist at the New Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology.

Gut Instincts
It is the microbe that could unlock our understanding of diseases, disorders and differences but there is no definitive figure for the total number of microbes in a human body. We know that dominant among them are bacteria, a majority of which are found in the gut, especially the large intestine or colon.

One estimate by researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, pegs the total number of bacteria in a human body at 40 trillion, compared with 37 trillion human cells. The total number of bacterial genes in the gut outnumber human genes by at least 30:1. Gut bacteria, which are the most extensively studied among human microbiota, help in breaking down undigested nutrients, producing vitamins and controlling disease-causing bacteria.

India is already quite late to the microbiome research race. The Human MetaGenome Consortium Japan began in 2005 and the US Human Microbiome Project two years later.

The US also announced a National Microbiome Initiative in 2016, committing a government investment of $121 million for two years and private investments of $400 million over an unspecified period. Similar initiatives can also be found in Canada and the European Union.

There are also projects like the American Gut project and, its offshoot, the British Gut project. They have received $2.5 million in individual contributions (as of May 2018) and crowdsourced samples from over 11,000 people (as of mid-2017). Among the observations made by American Gut were that those who had more than 30 plant types a week had more diverse gut microbiomes and fewer antibioticresistance genes than those who had 10 or fewer a week. Moreover, those who had antibiotics in the past one month had less diverse microbiota than those who had not had antibiotics for a year.

Antibiotic use is one of the causes, along with staying in a healthcare facility, of Clostridium difficile (C diff ) infections, whose symptoms include diarrhoea, nausea, fever and dehydration which could be life-threatening. Antibiotics kill both good and bad bacteria, but if they kill more of the good bacteria, it could aid the growth of bacteria like C. diff. The study of gut microbe, for instance, has had interesting results. The first randomised controlled trial in C diff infection, published in 2013, showed the efficacy of faecal microbiota transplant (FMT), in which faecal bacteria from a healthy donor is transferred to a patient, usually through colonoscopy.

Bhabatosh Das, assistant professor at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, believes people living in rural areas make for ideal donors. “Their guts have very diverse bacteria, while in urban areas fast food and antibiotics result in reduced diversity.

There are attempts being made to use FMT for obesity too. Dysbiosis, or an imbalance in the gut microbial composition, has been associated with obesity. According to a study published in Nature magazine in October 2018, FMT from mice, that were fed a normal-fat diet, to mice that were given a highfat diet resulted in beneficial effects usually caused by diet and exercise. Another study, also published in Nature, in April 2018, found that mice that were given chemotherapy and anitbiotic treatment regained their pre-treatment microbial composition after being given FMT.

In another study from 2017, 34 pairs of twins were assessed, in which only one of every pair had multiple sclerosis. More of the mice which were given gut microbes from the twin with MS developed a disease similar to MS than those which got microbes from the healthy twin. Poor microbial diversity has also been linked to inflammatory bowel disease and Type 1 diabetes. But there are still questions. “We can’t say whether diabetes is driving gut microbes or vice versa,” says Dr CS Yajnik, a diabetologist in Pune.

Mind & Microbe
The other area where a lot of research is focused is the relationship between microbiome and mental health. In a 2013 study by scientists from the California Institute of Technology and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, they found that when mice with symptoms similar to autism were given the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis, their microbiomes changed and they became more communicative and less anxious.

The American Gut project also observed that some types of bacteria may be more common in people suffering from depression than those who are not. It also found in an assessment of the gut microbiomes of 125 people — who claimed to have a mental health disorder, like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder — that their microbiomes had more in common with each than with that with someone of the same age, gender, country and body mass index.

Moreover, babies born through natural birth tend to pick up microbes from the mother’s vagina and bowel, which could make them less likely to develop asthma, Type 1 diabetes, obesity and allergies. Similarly, breast milk is crucial to the microbial composition in kids’ guts. While the human microbiome is getting a lot of attention these days, with reports of studies uncovering the relationship between the microbiome and a disease or disorder. But there are some who sound a word of caution and believe that the significance of the microbiome may be overstated.

“The hypothesis that variation in the gut microbiota can explain or be used to predict obesity status has received considerable attention and is frequently mentioned as an example of the role of the microbiome in human health...(but) we found that although there is an association, it is smaller than can be detected by most microbiome studies,” said a metastudy of 10 papers, published in August 2016 in mBio, a journal published by the American Society of Microbiology.

It is quite possible that some of the recent findings about the role of microbes in our health may be disputed by future research. But a project of the scale and scope of the Human Microbiome Project could definitely advance our understanding of the complex world of human microbiota and what we do to each other.
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Re: Indian Health Care Sector

Post by Supratik »

Swacch Bharat mission improves health outcome.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... Yq2fO.html
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Post by Supratik »

Leprosy for divorce law amended in LS. This has been now made religion neutral i.e. supersedes Muslim personal law.

https://swarajyamag.com/insta/nda-gover ... slamic-law
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Post by Supratik »

Sex ratio in HY improves a lot in 4 years.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cit ... 581169.cms
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Post by Supratik »

India may be getting a handle on JEV. The vaccine is India made I believe.

https://swarajyamag.com/insta/long-war- ... in-east-up
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Post by nithish »

Government reduces price of 390 anti-cancer drugs by up to 87%, to save Rs 800 crore
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has put out the list of 390 anti-cancer non-scheduled medicines with maximum retail price (MRP) reduction up to 87%. The revised prices have come into effect from Friday.

Earlier on February 27, the authority had put 42 anti-cancer drugs under 30% trade margin cap.

“The NPPA under Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has put out list of 390 anti-cancer non-scheduled medicines with MRP reduction up to 87%. The revised prices would come into effect from March 8, 2019,” an official release said.

Medicine manufacturers and hospitals have been directed to convey the revised rates. As many as 390 brands out of the 426 brands reported by manufacturers, showed downward price movement.

While the MRP of 38 brands has been reduced by 75% and more, 124 brands have seen reduction between 50% to 75%. The MRP of 121 brands has been reduced between 25% to 50%, while the maximum retail price of 107 brands have been reduced below 25%.

The decision is expected to benefit 22 lakh cancer patients in the country and will result in annual savings of nearly Rs 800 crore to the consumers.
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