Bharat Rakshak

Even as questions are being raised about whether the swine flu scare was exaggerated to benefit pharma companies, evidence has surfaced that
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several members of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) vaccine board which pushed countries to buy the H1N1 vaccine have had significant ties with pharma companies.

Union Finance Ministry officials, who are examining these proposals from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, said that Rs 4,500 crore may be set aside for a “conditional maternity benefit scheme”. Under this, cash would be provided directly to pregnant women, who suffer wage loss in the absence of maternity benefits at the workplace.

Officials said that Tamil Nadu was the only State to implement a similar programme, with its Muthulakshmi Reddy Maternity Benefit Scheme for pregnant women below the poverty line.

The other programme, for which another Rs 4,500 crore will be set aside, is for young and adolescent girls . . .

India’s healthcare challenge was to add at least one lakh hospital beds, double its healthcare human resources of doctors, triple the number of nurses and quadruple the number paramedics, he said. Preventive campaigns were needed to reduce the burden of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Health Secretary V. K. Subburaj said the State led the country in the number of cadaver transplants. During 2009, over 300 cadavers were harvested as against the 40 organs the previous year.

Use of robots and computers for surgery on patients with urological problems will be discussed at an international conference on advances in urology, to be held in the city of the Taj Mahal beginning Feb 3.

The five-day conference will be attended by over 1,000 Indian and 200 foreign specialists in urology.

In the pre-congress workshop, specialists of the American Urological Association will highlight and demonstrate latest robotic assisted laproscopic techniques.

Agarwal said the number of patients with urological problems was increasing each year. Five out of 10 have prostrate related problems, obstructing urine flow and needing intervention.

“Luckily, we have a whole range of technologies to address these problems now with laser prostatectomy, bipolar TURP (transurethral resection of the prostate), vaporisation of prostrate etc,” she said.

Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, because of the poor quality of water, are now known as stone-forming areas. The conference will discuss new treatment methods to deal with stone-related problems.

India has offered its expertise in yoga and Ayurveda to Sweden.

Many countries, including the U.S., France, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Canada, have already asked for teachers and qualified manpower in this area, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said after inaugurating Indo-Swedish Health Week with his Swedish counterpart Maria Larsson.

“Sweden may also find Ayurveda and yoga to be quite useful and beneficial in the public health area,” he said.

Outlining the steps taken by India in improving public health, Mr. Azad said it had been decided to include registration of all pregnant women and newborn babies. There are about 27 million pregnancies every year and registration will include details such as name, address, verifiable telephone number to ascertain the status of ante-natal and post-natal care at every level.

For someone who was born without the tools of hearing –the inner ear and the auditory nerve – essentially profoundly deaf, he has come quite a distance.

However, at one year and 11 months, Kaushik had a surgery that has not only helped him hear eventually, but also notched his name in medical history. Mohan Kameswaran, director, Madras ENT Research Foundation, says Kaushik is the youngest-known recipient of an Auditory Brainstem Implantation (ABI). ABI is a technique in which a small chip is placed in the brainstem to “restore hearing sensation.”

“In 99.9 per cent of the cases, children will have a cochlea and a nerve in place. The cochlea may be defective and we replace it with a cochlear implant to facilitate hearing. However, none of that would work for Kaushik,” he explains. So instead of stimulating the cochlea, they had to put in an electronic device into his brain stem so as to directly stimulate the area of the brain that is responsible for hearing. An external device that fits snugly behind his bold ear, is fitted with a microphone and a mini-processor, also powers it. The internal chip’s electrodes stimulate the brain to produce sound.

“Since he had none of the tools for hearing, we had to use something that would bypass all this and target the auditory centre of his brain directly. Thankfully, hearing is among the most-organised activities of the brain and it is simple enough to be simulated with an ABI. In an ideal world, the ABI would ensure that there is no deaf person at all – it is the technology that will give hearing to everybody,” Dr. Kameswaran said.

A team of neurosurgeons from the Voluntary Health Services and ABI experts from the University of Wurzburg in Germany aided the ENT surgeons at MERF to put in the device made by an Australian company, costing just over Rs.10 lakh.

On Republic Day 2009, Kaushik got his own chip, with its 12 electrodes, implanted in the brain stem. When tested on the table, it seemed to work. But it would take at least three months before the brain could get used to the chip and it could be switched on. At his first perception of sound, the child cried, and his doctors were overjoyed. The device was working well and it was only a matter of time, with the appropriate auditory training, that he would begin to hear and speak normally.

In a sample size of over 6,000 people in urban, semi-urban and rural areas of Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur, only 240 had “normal” values when tested as part of a population-based study conducted at Sri Ramachandra University.

About 43 per cent of them had abnormal glucose metabolism; 70.3 per cent had abnormal lipid levels (cholesterol); 17 per cent had blood pressure between 140-90 mmHg; and 30 per cent had BP of 130-90 mmHg; 18 per cent were depressed; and 30 per cent had a high homocysteine level (which has a strong relationship with cardiovascular disease).

Providing details of the results of the first two phases of the study, S. Thanikachalam, principal investigator, said it was clear from the results that the belief that Asians are genetically prone to vascular disease was a fallacy. “If it was genetic, then the incidence of common conditions should be the same, irrespective of whether it is an urban, rural or semi-urban setting. But that is not true. We have used the diagnostic protocols laid down by the WHO and the Indian Council for Medical Research and our data has been validated. Clearly, environment has a role to play,” he added.

A rare eye surgery was successfully performed on a 13-year-old Salem boy at the Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital here. . . He was recommended the ‘Glued Intra Ocular Lens (IOL) Implant,’ an advanced surgical procedure introduced by the Agarwal Hospital for the first time in the world, to regain his superior vision.

He said earlier treatment for cases without lens capsule was a challenge for ophthalmologists and for most of these cases nothing could be done.

“With this Glued IOL technology, we can provide treatment for patients with intraocular lens capsule missing. The glue used here is fibrin or tissue glue usually made from serum. This technique will help patient to have better visual acuity,” he said.

An unusual surgery was performed by a team of physicians at the Chettinad Health City on a 54-year-old patient with a unique heart condition. . . the patient had a rare condition known as ‘Situs Inversus Solitaris with Dextrocardia.’ In this condition, the whole organ appears flipped over, so that the anatomy could be described as back to front. The chambers, valves and major vessels were in reverse position. . . The treatment was provided under the Chief Minister’s Insurance Scheme.

Belief that Indians are genetically prone to vascular diseases, a fallacy: Study

In a history of sorts for the Government General Hospital in its 175th year celebrations, surgeons transplanted three cadaveric kidneys on as many recipients, with three teams working over five-six hours.

It may even be a record of sorts in the field of organ transplantation, according to J. Amalorpavanathan, Co-ordinator.

The fourth kidney was sent to Stanley Government Hospital where it was used on a 24 year-old male with renal failure. All four corneas were sent to the Government Eye Hospital in Egmore. As for the two hearts, matching recipients could not be found within the state or even in South India.

With the time running out for heart transplantation, authorities decided to harvest the heart valves from both donors and store them for use later.

The valves were accordingly stored at Global Hospitals.

The 108 ambulance service will add 160 more vehicles to its fleet in the State by March 2011 to provide emergency medical care to more people. . . with this addition, number of vehicles in its fleet would touch 545.

Already, the 108 ambulance services had provided emergency care and saved the lives of 3,30,853 persons since September 15, 2008 of which accident and trauma cases were 1,03,239 and pregnancy cases 88,675 and cardiac cases 117,465 and poison cases 11,685

vera_k wrote:Posting here as it is based on a traditional Indian remedy. Hope the good doctor gets one of the Padma awards someday.

Sinus Sufferer Turns Nasal Spray Project Into Sales Leader

Pune-based IT firm, Sofomo Embedded Solutions, has designed the path-breaking handheld ‘Lifeplot CCD1’, which is able to receive and transmit 12-lead ECGs using wireless technology direct to the cardiologist’s mobile phone.

For the first time, Dindigul headquarter hospital will use nano-technology to sterilise its operation theatres to use it continuously without long break.

To begin with, a special air disinfection device with nano technology will be installed at the hospital shortly. After Dindigul, this technology will be introduced in Palani GH.

The device will clean operation theatres of government hospital in the town said T. Jayabal, Joint Director of Health Services. “Infection is the biggest hurdle in maintaining operation theatres. We have to achieve zero infection in the theatres before performing operation.”

Speaking to The Hindu, he said that all operation theatres in the district were sterilised adopting fumigation and formaldehyde so far. Earlier, operation theatre had to be closed at least for three to four days to make it fit for next operation. It was possible for the headquarter hospital that has three or four operation theatres. But even HQ hospital has only one speciality theatre. Closing it for a long time would hit special services offered to patients, he added.

The new system would take just three hours before and after an operation to sterilise the entire theatre, he added.

Nano titanium dioxide, which is in nano-particulate form, would exhibit germicidal function when exposed to ultraviolet light and kill bacteria and fungi, decompose all kinds of micro organic matters and destroy micro organisms. Photo catalytic oxidation application for air purification would also enhance air quality in both indoor and outdoor environments.

The benefits were immense. It would scale down considerable time for disinfecting and sterilising the operation theatre effectively.

Patients undergoing surgeries and treatment for injuries at some government hospitals in Tamil Nadu may be putting themselves at grave risk, as samples of disinfectants used have been found to be substandard. Worse, the department knew about it in December last year, yet the solution continues to be in use.

The antiseptic applied on the skin to disinfect the patient before surgery and to clean wounds was manufactured by Endolabs Limited, Pigdamber, Indore, the sole supplier of the solution since early 2009.

People in remote villages in the district need not come to district headquarter hospitals for caesarean operation as the Department of Health Services has started conducting the same surgeries at primary health centres itself.

Initially, elective caesarean only would be performed at the PHCs. There were plans to conduct operation in all PHCs in the district to extend advanced medical care at the door step of rural masses.

Deputy Director of Health Services K. Jagadeesh Kumar said that these surgeries were performed free of cost to the poor.

Private hospitals have been charging at least 15,000 for LSCS.

On an average, 11.1 lakh deliveries took place in the State in a year of which 21 per cent was caesarean cases.

Now, surgeries were performed only in 26 out of 1,533 primary health centres in the State.

. . . the child was diagnosed with Congenital Stapes Fixation and the treatment was begun. Consultant surgeon at the hospital Anjana Vishwanathan told presspersons on Thursday that on opening the middle ear, the nerve to the face was found to be running right across the oval window area where the opening into the inner ear needed to be made.

The nerve normally ran in the protective bony fallopian canal above the oval window. Normally, such cases would have been dropped from further treatment.

But, an innovative technique was adopted by the surgeons.

Under this, a fallopian canal pothole into the inner ear was made, as the surgeons found after assessing the diameter of the dehiscent nerve that the fallopian canal was empty. This was reconfirmed by a computed tomography scan. The pothole was made by very slow drilling above the dehiscent nerve and a vein graft placed over it.

A teflon prosthesis was then clamped onto the abnormally downward slanting slender second bone incus. The patient's hearing was tested last week and found to be completely normal.

Since the entire procedure was done through the natural ear canal she had no pain or blood loss after the surgery. She could go back to school after just a day's treatment.

“People should know that this is not an inoperable problem,” Dr. Anjana Vishwanathan said.

“There is an option now. We have so far not found this technique mentioned in any medical journal,” she said.

Scrap YSR's schemes: Plan panel
Jinka Nagaraju, TNN, Mar 14, 2010, 04.09am IST

HYDERABAD: In a major blow to the state government, the Planning Commission has given the thumbs down to practically every scheme launched by late chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy during the last five years and more or less directed his successor K Rosaiah to do away with populist schemes and concentrate on providing quality development.

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Castigating the state on the manner in which money was being spent on the Arogyasri scheme, Sen said: “The state spends 66 per cent of its health care budget or Rs 800 crore every year on Arogyasri. You have brought under it every disease and ailment from common cough to heart attack. And almost all the cases are being treated in corporate hospitals. Through this scheme, you are indirectly fattening the corporate hospitals and killing the state health system,” is how Sen summed up YSR’s pet scheme

“Our expansion has been delayed as there are two sides in Indian politics: one wants to promote foreign investment, the other wants to curb it,” Shimizu, 56, said.

Azad overrules IMA's objections to rural MBBS course
Thursday, March 18, 2010 17:31 hrs IST

New Delhi: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has three problems with the government’s plan to create a special cadre of rural doctors through a truncated MBBS course, but the health ministry has refused to yield to its pressure and will push ahead on the subject as planned.

According to a top health ministry official, a seven-member delegation of the IMA met Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and apprised him of their reservations over plans for the rural doctors’ course. The IMA is the top doctors’ association in the country.

"The IMA has three problems with the plan," a senior health ministry official told IANS.

"They want to call the new medical institutions for rural doctors as ’schools’ and not colleges, as planned by the ministry. They are also opposed to naming these four-year courses as degrees. The IMA wants these to be called diplomas and not degrees, as a normal MBBS course is of five-year duration," the official said.

"The doctors’ association also wants a separate registration for these rural doctors," the official added.

However, the health minister has rejected their demands.

"The minister listened to their problems patiently but told them that there is no conflict of interest with the regular doctors. The changes as demanded by the IMA will not be incorporated," the official added.

Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC), popularly called Rural MBBS, is a four-year course for rural students who will work in health sub-centres and primary health care centres.

Azad has often raised the issue of shortage of doctors in India. "A whopping 80 percent of the doctors are serving just 20 percent of the population. The doctor-patient ratio is not encouraging," Azad said in a function Wednesday and reiterated that there is a need for more doctors in villages.

According to the medical education regulator, the Medical Council of India, rural doctors are the need of the hour. "They cannot do surgeries but can treat 300 different types of ailments that rural Indians face regularly," MCI president Ketan Desai told IANS.

"I am in favour of rural doctors. Those sitting in cities like Delhi and Mumbai cannot understand the trauma of villagers and how they suffer without any medical attention," Desai added.

vera_k wrote:^^^

I have new respect for YSR. I hope the new CM asks the Planning Comission dodos to explain why they believe the state run health system is a better idea than one that relies on private players.

• Member, State Planning Board, West Bengal
• Member, State Planning Board, Tripura
• Joined Planning Commission on leave as Professor of Economics in Jawaharlal Nehru University

In a rare feat, Frontier Lifeline Hospitals has performed heart transplants simultaneously on two patients hailing from Chennai.

Last Friday, two male patients with end-stage heart failure waitlisted for transplants were wheeled into the operation theatre following donor calls from the General Hospital and Apollo Hospital.

“The transplant procedure as such is fairly straightforward. The behind-the-scene coordination and logistics management is the challenge,” Dr. Cherian said.

The police facilitated smooth traffic flow for the teams to rush back to the hospital, where transplant teams immediately took over.

The only two other dual transplants have been reported from New York (2001) and Newcastle (2009), Dr. Cherian said.

Over the past couple of weeks, enough has been going on in Chennai to get its residents a little worried about whether they are getting genuine, quality drugs when they go to a pharmacy.

The Directorate of Drugs Control, as part of its continuing regular inspections, stumbled upon a racket that was ingeniously re-introducing expired drugs back into the market. M. Bhaskaran, director, Drugs Control, said “We had some tips and pursuing that, we conducted surprise raids at least at 15 wholesale and retail shops on March 10.

Hidden behind the media stir caused by the recent drugs haul is even more upsetting information. The Drugs Control office has unearthed over the last year alone, several cases of fake drugs (drugs not made by the manufacturer but riding on the brand value) were unearthed and seized. Drugs such as Primolut – N (hormonal), and Benadryl Cough syrup were found to be fake. While from the packs itself it would have been difficult to tell if the drugs were fake, but a chemical examination leaves no doubt that they are indeed not the original.

A massive scale-up of the pilot project on cardio vascular disease prevention, in a phased manner, is on the cards in Tamil Nadu.

The project, which aims at creating awareness and facilitating lifestyle modifications and providing medical care to those who require it, will be gradually scaled up over the years. In the first year (2010-2011), it will be implemented in 8 districts; in the second phase (2011-2012) in 10 districts; and the final phase (2012- 2013) in another 10 districts. Two districts have already been covered under the pilot project since 2007.

“Any person above 30 years is screened in the health care centres for blood cholesterol, and blood sugar, and BMI is measured. Their risk of falling sick with CVD is estimated, and if high, course correction in terms of lifestyle modification is offered. We use WHO protocols only.”

“Primordial prevention, even before primary prevention, is what we are looking at. Our awareness campaign intends to help people keep hypertension and diabetes — two huge risk factors for CVD — away.”

Scientists from across India today announced the first-ever detail mapping of mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), an exercise that may help in producing more effective drugs to combat the bug that causes TB which kills 1.7 million people annually.

Hundreds of scientists from across the country put in joint efforts at a three-day 'Connect 2 Decode' (C2D) conference to complete the final re-annotation of the 4,000- odd genes that determine how the TB bug lives and infects humans.

The TB gene map, developed under the Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) initiative of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) will be available in the public domain for drug makers.

"This marks the beginning of the efforts of C2D to align R&D with public health and to use the full potential of the open source model for the development of medical technologies and drug discovery for neglected diseases," Samir Brahmachari, Director General, CSIR said.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 1.7 million people die annually from TB and in some areas of the world, one in four people can no longer be treated with standard drugs regimens.

"Despite this public health emergency, TB research funding remains alarmingly inadequate, particularly for research into new drugs," Brahmachari said.

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Sunday claimed that India was losing an estimated Rs7 lakh crore to foreign pharmaceutical companies due to lack of research and development in the field of ancient medicine.
Baba Ramdev, who addressed a gathering on the occasion of the first convocation at Dr DY Patil Vidyapeeth, said, "We as Indians have become indifferent to our traditional vedic knowledge which has a panacea for all ills. We have become callous in our approach towards our saints and sages and have come under the influence of the West," he said.

Sidet says Papa Gary helped connect with Child First International, an Australian organisation that has funded the medical treatment of at least 250 children across the world. The organisation contacted Dr. Cherian's Frontier Lifeline Hospital in Chennai, which had taken care of two other children sponsored by them.

The hospital was willing but there another hurdle sprung up – airlines were unwilling to let the blue baby travel without medical supervision. The hospital then decided to send paediatric cardiologist Yogesh C. Sathe to accompany the baby to India, providing medical support on the flight from Pnom Penh to Chennai via Bangkok.

“On investigation, we found that the child had a condition called pulmonary atresia, wherein his pulmonary artery that leads from the heart to the lung is completely blocked,” explains Prem Sekar, Consultant - Interventional Paediatric Cardiologist. Also, there was only one valve separating the chambers of the heart, and the left chamber was smaller.

“It cannot be corrected at one go,” Raghavan Subramanyan, Head of Cardiology, adds. The first procedure to separate oxygenated blood from impure blood was done as the vein carrying blood from the upper part of the body was bypassed to the lung. The surgery was performed by Ravi Agarwal, consultant cardiac surgeon, and his team.

Improvements in large countries like India and China helped to drive down the overall death rates. . . . Six countries accounted for more than half of all the maternal deaths in 2008: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But India has made steady progress, and because its population is so large, its improvements have helped considerably to decrease the worldwide rate of maternal deaths. China has also made considerable progress. In India, there were 408 to 1,080 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 1980, and by 2008, there were 154 to 395, the new study found. In China, there were 144 to 187 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1980, and 35 to 46 in 2008. . . . Her group issued its own report on Tuesday, noting improvements that were saving the lives of women during pregnancy and birth in various countries. For instance, India pays women to get prenatal care and skilled care for delivery.

The State government has proposed to set up a register in every government hospital in the State to ensure that haemophilia patients receive free medicines, Health Secretary V.K. Subburaj said here on Saturday.

Participating in the World Haemophilia Day organised at Voluntary Health Services, Taramani, he said the modalities would be ready in a fortnight.

Following a representation from non-governmental organisations working with haemophiliacs that medical treatment could cost up to Rs.1 lakh for a patient each year, the State government had announced in the Budget that medicines they require would be supplied free of cost in government hospitals.

According to Mr. Subburaj there are about 2,000 persons with the genetic condition, which affects only boys. Girls are born carriers of the condition in which the blood lacks the ability to coagulate.

Haemophilia can be diagnosed in toddlers by the swelling in their knee. Such patients need to be given the coagulation factors to enable the blood to clot.

Of late, more road accident victims are seeking rehabilitation therapy at Government Stanley Hospital's Institute for Research and Rehabilitation of Hand and Department of Plastic Surgery.

The 30-year-old institute, set up to treat victims of industrial and workplace accidents, recently saw the number of hand reconstructive surgeries crosses the three-lakh mark.

It is also preparing a database of patients who might require hand transplantation.