-The Economic Times Drug companies paid as little as 50,000 as compensation to families of volunteers who died during clinical trials for new medicines last year, leading to sharp criticism about the paltry sums being handed out and growing clamour among health groups for more stringent guidelines on new drug trials.  According to government data accessed by a healthcare activist through an RTI query, Germany's Fresenius Kabi paid 50,000 each to the...

-The Economic Times India has some of the best quaternary and tertiary care in the world and is gradually acquiring a name for itself even in the field of 'medical tourism'. Secondary care is still a significant challenge, but even in several smaller towns and district headquarters, there is a growing supply of maternity homes and multi-speciality secondary care facilities. At all of these levels of care, given the large disease burden...

-The Economic Times India is a country of 1.2 billion people. One estimate, provided by the World Health Organization, suggests that, on average, one physician is required to serve 1,000 people, across all levels of care. This implies that we need a total of 1.2 million Physicians to serve our population. However, the total number of formally-qualified allopathic doctors in the country is estimated to be only about half that number,...

A cure for India’s health care ills is within reach provided there is political will In most developed — and many developing — countries today, a 12-year school education and universal health coverage (UHC) are the two primary responsibilities of the state. India has failed miserably on both counts. Let us look at some of the problems of medical and health care: • Fifty years ago, when there was no commercialisation of...

Tuberculosis re-emerges as a major threat as new drug-resistant strains develop because of mismanagement of the disease. At the beginning of the year, doctors at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre reported that they had 12 patients infected with TDR-TB, or totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a condition in which the TB bacilli is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used in the conventional treatment of the disease. Panic...