-Down to Earth Health experts blame Centre's over-emphasis on women's sterilisation for the Chhattisgarh tragedy THERE WAS nothing right about the sterilisation camp held on November 8 in Chhattisgarh's Takhatpur block of Bilaspur district. An overambitious government doctor-with unsterilised equipment and virtually no manpower-set out to conduct laparoscopic tubectomy on 83 women in an abandoned private hospital. The mass sterilisation led to the death of 13 women and left others critically ill. They were...
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Objects of state control -Jashodhara Dasgupta
-The Indian Express The tragedy of several women dying after undergoing sterilisation operations in the Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh has once again thrown up uncomfortable questions around India's population programme. Although the cases are being investigated and the exact cause of the deaths has not been ascertained, the incident brings to light the abysmal conditions in which women are compelled to accept government-provided contraception. India is a signatory to an agreement at...
More »A reality check on intellectual property concerns -Moushami Joshi and Srividhya Ragavan
-The Hindu The Working Group on Intellectual Property can serve as a platform where real time solutions to meet India's need for low-cost medicines can be addressed After what seemed like a historic trip for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which held out the promise of reshaping India-U.S. relations positively, the initiation of the Out-of-Cycle Review (OCR) by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has brought a sobering reality check as to what...
More »Pvt sector deserts war on TB, funding down 33% since 2011 -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India Even as tuberculosis (TB) continues to haunt the world, a new study has revealed that funding for research and development of new drugs to fight the disease is floundering. Private sector funding has declined by more than a third since 2011 as pharma companies are closing their TB research programmes. Pfizer shut down its TB drug discovery programme in 2012, AstraZeneca in 2013 and Novartis in 2014. Meanwhile,...
More »After battle with MDR-TB, they emerged winners -Malathy Iyer
-The Times of India MUMBAI: "It is a miracle I'm alive," said 31-year-old Borivli resident Deepti Chavan, who was given six months to live in 2004. Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) had literally eaten away her left lung and doctors were skeptical she would live for long. Drug-resistant TB is emerging as one of the biggest health challenges-more and more are getting infected (see box) even as the number of effective medicines is shrinking....
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