HEALTHCARE
Punjab’s addiction anguish
The following is an edited extract from ‘Most of What You Know About Addiction is Wrong’ by Anirudh Kala, published by Speaking Tiger IT is a myth that the people of Punjab have latched on to drugs only in recent years from previously having been ascetically abstinent. An Indian publication
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‘We’ve set up palliative care centres in 8 districts’
Telangana has become a frontrunner in State-supported cancer treatment by opening palliative care centres in eight districts in partnership with the Pain Relief and Palliative Care Society since 2017. Earlier, in 2007, the government-run MNJ Cancer Institute partnered Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration, a Canadian NGO, to set up a palliative
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Muzaffarpur hospital gets going with surgeries, chemo
IT is a year since the Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre opened its prefab doors to patients in Muzaffarpur, bringing specialized care to this small city and its hinterland in Bihar. In the short time since services began at the hospital, 228 major and 683 minor surgeries have
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Fund someone’s reading glasses
It is comforting to end the year by giving. Yet, even as you get your debit card out, choosing a beneficiary can be a challenge. Putting money where it works well for someone is invariably a complicated call. But it is possible with just one modest donation, well directed, to
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Blessed is the rural hospital
It’s a dreary morning in May. The news from all over the country is of deaths, cremations and patients trying to find beds in hospitals. In sharp contrast, at Chinchpada, a small village in Maharashtra, a thanksgiving is being held. The occasion is the installation of an oxygen plant at
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The next pandemic?
Masarhi is a village in Bihar so steeped in grinding poverty that its people are known to hunt rats in their fields and eat them. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, however, these hapless people with so little have what many residents in cities don’t — an easily accessible
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Doctors out there
In 1992 a young couple, both doctors, travelled from Madurai in Tamil Nadu to a remote corner of Assam to check out the Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital. They had been told that the hospital needed to be revived, having become defunct 10 years earlier after the missionaries running
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Future of healthcare
A former foreign minister of Singapore in search of a cure for his Parkinson’s disease admitted himself to the hospital at the Institute of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (I-AIM) in Bengaluru. He had the typical Parkinson’s symptoms of tremors, imbalance and problems with gait. Of course, he had access to
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Giving nurses a better deal
Holding the Joyee Award, nurse Melina Rumba Lama, born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, spoke frankly about the ground realities of nursing. With over 12 years in the profession, she admitted with a laugh she rarely has time for herself. She moves back and forth between being a nurse at
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Low-cost clinics built on community trust
Medical help a few huts away was unthinkable in remote tribal villages of South Rajasthan. People here migrate to cities and return with silicosis and TB (tuberculosis). There’s malnutrition, maternal and child ill health, cancer and other illnesses villagers grapple with. They used to turn to quacks or travel to
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‘Bring back bacteria and sanitise less’
Is the irrational use of antibiotics leading to a public health emergency? Are Indians heading for a situation in which life-saving drugs won’t work on patients who desperately need them? A scientific study under the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has both good news and bad. The situation is
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Students learn farming by getting down to it in the fields
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Diagnosis matters: Cancer in thumb almost killed him
THERE are nine fingers that SC has now. The thumb of his right hand was removed to save him from sarcoma, a form of cancer that affects joints and tissues. Amputation is required to remove the affected part and save the rest of the body. In SC’s case, it was
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