-The Telegraph In a primary health centre in eastern Jharkhand, the angry shouts of a nurse punctuated the occasional wails of a woman in her early-20s who was in labour pain and only minutes away from delivering her baby. Each time a uterine contraction evoked a yell or a wail or the woman sought a more comfortable position during labour, the nurse or other health workers admonished her, asking her to shut...

-PTI Clinical drug trials in India led to the death of 1144 people in 2010 and 2011, the government today said. The number of people dying during such trials also include 1106 people whose death could be attributed to diseases like cancer, terminal illness or various unrelated causes which is also known as Serious Adverse Event (SAE) of death, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the Rajya Sabha. "The number...

-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 Times of India Indians are not only bad organ donors, but also averse to accepting brain death as the end of human life.  Doctors say most Indian families think their near and dear ones have a chance to recover till their hearts beat.  This slow acceptance of brain death — Patients who have suffered complete and irreversible loss of all brain functions and are clinically and legally dead — is seriously affecting...

-The Telegraph A global effort to create a vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that has abandoned dozens of candidate vaccines because of unsatisfactory trials has persuaded India to join its new vaccine-design strategy. The Translational Health Sciences and Technology Institute, a government research centre in a Haryana suburb near Delhi, will set up a laboratory for basic research to seek out molecules that can generate antibodies to effectively neutralise HIV. India’s...