India will soon ban blood tests to detect tuberculosis (TB) that are widely available across the country.  An expert group set up by the Drug Controller General of India has found that blood tests are mostly inaccurate for TB detection. It has recommended to the Union health ministry to immediately ban them.  A ministry official said "The DCGI had set up an eight-member committee to look at whether a proposal by the...

Muslims, SCs, STs reflect better social indices, closer to national averages Early in the morning, Mohammad Nadeem, a 25-year-old ‘pakka adati’, big wholesaler, at one of Muzaffarnagar’s fruit and vegetable mandis, briskly sets about selling carrots and oranges. As he expertly sifts through sacks of fresh produce, it’s difficult to picture him hawking peanuts by the roadside. But for five years in this bustling western Uttar Pradesh mandi, Nadeem’s store...

The government is not keen to change the classification of victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy in its curative petition before the Supreme Court and allow higher compensation for thousands or admit to a higher number of fatalities, although it is ready to consider doubling the relief demanded for the small number it currently accepts as dead and those permanently scarred due to the lethal gas leak. The government seems to...

-Daily Bhaskar   The malnourished children in tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh were subjected to drug trials by doctors at their clinics in defiance of set norms. Documents accessed by DNA reveal that 20 malnourished children who suffered tuberculosis were tested for Bonnisan – an ayurvedic drug manufactured by Indian pharmaceutical company – at Nainpur in Mandla district. All the patients were in infancy or early childhood. Their age ranged from 8 months...

In an outrageous act bound to dismay the medical ethics community, as many as 233 mentally ill patients in Indore were subjected to clinical trials to check the efficacy of various drugs, including 42 patients for Dapoxetine, a drug used to cure premature ejaculation. The trials were conducted at private clinics by doctors of the mental hospital attached to the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College, Indore, between January 2008 and October 2010....