The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today endorsed a new rapid test for tuberculosis, which it says could revolutionize the way the disease is tackled by providing an accurate diagnosis in about 100 minutes, compared to current tests that can take up to three months. “This new test represents a major milestone for global TB diagnosis and care. It also represents new hope for the millions of people who are...
More »SEARCH RESULT
A Deadly Misdiagnosis by Michael Specter
Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...
More »Millennium Development Goals & India by KS Jacob
The Millennium Development declaration was a visionary document, which sought partnership between rich and poor nations to make globalisation a force for good. Its signatories agreed to explicit goals on a specific timeline. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set ambitious targets for reducing hunger, poverty, infant and maternal mortality, for reversing the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and giving children basic education by 2015. These also included gender equality,...
More »Asia heads record levels of drug-resistant tuberculosis, UN health agency says
Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is now at record levels with Asia bearing the brunt of the epidemic, says the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in a report released today that also calls for better diagnosis of the disease. In some parts of the world, one in four people with TB becomes ill with a form of the disease that can no longer be treated with standard drugs, according to WHO’s...
More »Public Health
KEY TRENDS • The 2019 India TB report says that the country accounted for a quarter of the global tuberculosis (TB) burden with an estimated 27 lakh cases in 2018. In 2018, the country was able to achieve a total notification of 21.5 lakh TB cases, of which 25 percent was from private sector. Majority of the TB burden is among the working age group. Nearly 89 percent of TB cases came from the age group 15-69 years....
More »