Four children died at the Rambagh hospital in Adipur in Kutch district of Gujarat on Wednesday after they were given oral vaccinations for measles. According to a government spokesman, seven children in the 0-1 age group from a slum colony were given the oral Vaccines by Health Department officials. Four of them soon developed adverse symptoms and were rushed to hospital where they died during treatment. Till evening, Collectorate officials had...

The 3 PSUs had complied with the good manufacturing practice norms Closure decision was based on misinterpreted signals from WHO Taking a critical view of the manner in which the manufacturing licences of three public-sector Vaccine producing units were suspended, a Parliamentary panel has said it was abundantly clear that the decision was based on a major misconception and due to the misinterpretation of certain unclear signals in the communication from the...

Patients battling cancer, infections and mental illness joined a rally here today beseeching the government to reject a trade pact with the European Union that they fear will threaten the availability of inexpensive generic medicines in India. An estimated 2,000 people, many among them infected with HIV, walked along Delhi’s Parliament Street on a day when Indian and EU officials were negotiating a free trade agreement in Brussels. Health activists and lawyers...

India’s drug regulator has refused to disclose key information about a controversial government study that provided Indian girls a Vaccine designed to protect them from cervical cancer, amplifying suspicions about the study’s objectives. The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has refused to release for public scrutiny the study’s protocols, which are expected to contain information about its purpose and methodology, a set of health activists said yesterday. The Union government had...

The budget session of the Parliament began with President Pratibha Patil’s address. All indications point to a normal functioning of this session, unlike the wasted winter session.  This is because the UPA 2 government has agreed to constitute a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to look into the 2G spectrum allocation scam. If the government were to have done this in the winter session itself, then precious time and resources would...