An estimated 41 million people have been cured of tuberculosis (TB) over the past 15 years through a treatment strategy recommended by the United Nations health agency, according to a new report, but success remains fragile and governments must strengthen their determination to combat the disease. “With 1.7 million people dying from tuberculosis last year – including 380,000 women, many of whom were young mothers – these successes are far too...

All epidemiological data in Chhattisgarh are ‘guesstimates' Underestimation of malaria mortality figures Public hospitals ill-equipped to handle severe cases Last week, the medical journal Lancet published the results of a malaria survey undertaken by researchers as part of the Million Deaths Study, an ambitious programme that strives to document the causes of nearly one million deaths in India from the period 1998 to 2014. As per the survey 2,05,000 Indians die of malaria every...

After creating a huge controversy by claiming that foreign patients who were treated in India developed antibiotic resistance, authors of the superbug New Delhi metallo-B-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) bacteria study published in the United Kingdom-based medical journal The Lancet now say that poor sanitation and unregulated antibiotic use presented an immense challenge and should be of great concern to the Indian health authorities and the World Health Organisation. Responding to queries in the...

According to recent estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO) there's been a sharp drop in the number of polio cases this year as compared to the last. "This is the biggest drop we have seen in the last six years," said Dr J S Bhasin. The number of cases of type-1 polio is only 16 this year as compared to 51 last year, while type-3 cases stand at 23 against last...

Malaria kills around 205,000 people in India each year, more than 13 times the estimate made by the World Health Organization, researchers said on Thursday. WHO, the public health arm of the UN, estimates that approximately 15,000 people a year die from malaria in India, and 100,000 adults worldwide. The researchers called for both figures to be urgently revised so they do not hurt funding for prevention, rapid diagnosis and treatment. “If you...