December 1 is World AIDS Day, and there is some reason for India to feel good about. A new study, conducted by a multinational diagnostic chain, claims that the number of HIV positive patients has declined in the country in the past three years. The study, conducted by Metropolis Healthcare Ltd, tested a sample size of 18,005 walk-in patients for HIV-related diseases between January-October 2008, 2009 and 2010, in Mumbai, New Delhi,...

If India is becoming a favourite destination for clinical trials, Maharashtra is the hub with Mumbai and Pune accounting for the largest number of clinical trials in the country. Maharashtra alone accounted for well over a quarter of all the clinical trials registered with the clinical trials registry of India till 2010. A study of the trials recorded in the registry, done by the Centre for Studies in Ethics and...

United Nations agencies today launched new international guidelines aimed at helping to protect health workers who provide care to people infected with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) from becoming infected themselves in the course of their work. The guidelines, drafted by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), are designed to help doctors, nurses and midwives, pharmacists and laboratory technicians, as...

A new United Nations report shows for the first time how poor health is linked to poverty in cities and calls on policymakers to identify those that need the most help and target measures to improve their well-being. The report, entitled “Hidden Cities: unmasking and overcoming health inequities in urban settings,” was launched today in Kobe, Japan, where leaders from governments, academia, media and non-governmental organizations have been meeting for the...

As the country grapples with a “mixed burden” of diseases that beset the developing as well as developed countries, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday said adequate research was needed to deal with the challenge of non-communicable and re-emerging diseases. Addressing the centenary celebrations of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) here, Mr. Azad said as the country moved from a developing nation to the...