Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
Thursday, June 26th, 2008 |
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today gave its approval for extending grants-in-aid to Indian Pharmaceutical Industry for R&D projects involving Clinical Trials (Phase-I, II and III) to develop new drugs for neglected diseases of tropical region under Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Research Programme of Department of Science & Technology.
Deptt. of S&T has been implementing the Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Research Programme (DRPR) since 1994-95 as a Plan Programme to support pharma industry – institutional collaboratrive R&D projects and infrastructure development. From 2004-05 onwards this programme has extended soft loans to pharma industries for R&D projects to the tune of 70% of total project cost at a simple annual rate of interest of 3% with 10 years of instalment repayment period beginning from the end of project duration.
(more…)
Posted in Pharma | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 |
In an exemplary first, the Manipal Hospital has conducted a successful liver transplant on a child using a healthy part of the liver of her mother. The surgery places the hospital in the league of a few healthcare setups within the country offering this super specialization service. The most significant aspect of this achievement was that the procedure was done by an in-house team of well qualified transplant surgeons.
Shveta Gore, an architect by profession gave up her job without any regret before her daughter Prachi was born. She wanted to be full time mother devoted to Prachi’s upbringing. She never knew that one day she would have to fight great odds to save her baby’s life.
(more…)
Posted in Health | No Comments »
Monday, June 2nd, 2008 |
Patients in developing countries often need to have X-ray examinations repeated so that doctors have the image quality they need for useful medical diagnosis, the IAEA is learning. The findings come from a survey involving thousands of patients in 45 hospitals and 12 countries of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
“Poor image quality constitutes a major source of unnecessary radiation to patients in developing countries,” emphasizes Dr. Madan Rehani of the IAEA Division of Radiation, Waste and Transport Safety, which carried out the survey under technical cooperation (TC) projects of the IAEA. “Fortunately, we´re moving forward to help countries improve the situation and have shown definite improvements.”
(more…)
Posted in Health | No Comments »
Saturday, May 31st, 2008 |
Naandi’s Community-based Safe Drinking Water programme which is presently supplying clean drinking water to a population of 20 lakh underprivileged in the villages of Punjab and AP has won the Ashoka Changemaker’s competition under the “Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis” segment.
Naandi was declared as one of the 3 winners from the total 264 entries received from 54 countries. Incidentally the other two winners are also from India, making this a clean sweep for India in the realm of innovations to solve water and sanitation crises in large scale.
(more…)
Posted in Health | No Comments »
Saturday, May 24th, 2008 |
Awareness about Kidney disease is becoming increasingly important as far as the morbidity and mortality is concerned. Important causes of renal diseases are congenital diseases (Polycystic Kidneys), infections. The current lifestyle, which is increasing the incidence of hypertension and diabetes, is also responsible for rising numbers of kidney failure.
Diseases of the kidney and urinary tract contribute to over 8,50,000 deaths and over 15 million disability-adjusted life years the world over. According to WHO 2002 estimates, with an estimated end stage renal disease of 100 per million people, there could be about 100,000 patients per year in India.
(more…)
Posted in Health | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 |
Long-term data presented for the first time today from the SPIRIT III trial, Abbott’s U.S. pivotal trial studying the XIENCET V Everolimus Eluting Coronary Stent System, demonstrated that XIENCE V continues to deliver clinically superior benefits for patients compared to the TAXUS® paclitaxel-eluting coronary stent system. In this trial of more than 1,000 patients, XIENCE V demonstrated a 45 percent reduction in the risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and a 32 percent reduction in the risk of target vessel failure (cardiac events related to the treated vessel) at two years as compared to TAXUS. The SPIRIT III two-year results were presented by Gregg W. Stone, M.D., principal investigator of the SPIRIT III trial, during the late-breaking clinical trials session at EuroPCR 2008.
“Not only did XIENCE V clearly differentiate itself from the TAXUS stent in the first year after treatment, it has now demonstrated even more positive effects at (more…)
Posted in Pharma | No Comments »
Sunday, May 11th, 2008 |
Higher medical professional charges coupled with excessive desire for self-medication and increasing faith in traditional ayurvedic medicines, India’s over the counter drug sale has grown around 10% in the last 2 years, leaving USA and China much behind, where OTC drug sale is estimated at 4% to 5% respectively.
The above findings are arrived at ASSOCHAM on Latest OTC Drug Sale Pattern, highlighting that the share of sale of OTC traditional drugs in India has gone up to 30% as against of cold and cough medicines, 12% of vitamins and about 7% of Analgesics.
(more…)
Posted in Industry, Pharma | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008 |
A new National Pharmaceutical Policy focusing on the prices and availability of essential drugs has been drafted. The policy also includes measures for the growth of the pharma industry. Price control is one of the tools with the Indian government to maintain some reasonability in the prices of the medicines. Affordable medicines for all assume significance in view of the unique health insurance scheme for the below poverty line families that has been launched on 1st April, 2008. Of the entire expenditure on this scheme, 75 per cent will be borne by the Central Government and 25 per cent by the State Governments. Approximately 1crore 20 lakh people will be benefited annually under this scheme.
Discussing the models and systems being followed elsewhere in the world will help to learn from others experiences to minimize the prices and maximize the availability of drugs.
(more…)
Posted in Pharma | No Comments »
Thursday, April 10th, 2008 |
Everyone gets angry with their kids at some time or another – it’s normal, it’s healthy. Kids know just what buttons to push, and they push them! It helps to accept that anger is an honest emotion, but it’s what you choose to do with your anger that’s important.
The couple who this week were turned down as foster parents because they occasionally smack their own child raises an important issue about anger. Sue Atkins, a parenting coach, has some tips on how parents can release their feelings safely.
(more…)
Posted in Parenting | No Comments »
