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April 01, 2009
"What is the catchment area of your hospital?" the well-meaning person from the funding agency asked. I responded with our oft-quoted figure of people from over 1,500 villages coming to us for healthcare, including many from the adjoining parts of Madhya Pradesh. But what I did not tell him then ...
April 01, 2009
Does it make sense to teach ethics in an unethical setting? Should teachers who work in morally compromised institutions make an effort to introduce biomedical ethics to the curriculum? Using the medical establishment in contemporary India as a window to understanding the challenge of teaching et...
April 01, 2009
During the last century, radiology became an established  iscipline defined on the basis of examinations performed for diagnostic purposes initially using mainly x-rays. Little by little, and especially over the past decades, interventional radiology was "invented" and interventional neuroradiolo...
April 01, 2009
In the 1950s, the World Health Organisation, the apex organisation for global health, defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".
April 01, 2009
This paper discusses criteria for admission to the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU). In India there is a severe shortage of NICUs for effective critical care and even government medical colleges do not have full-fledged NICUs. Babies with certain medical conditions have very poor chances of s...
April 01, 2009
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that India has the second largest number of smokers in the world after China. According to the National Family Health Survey-3, 2005-06, 57% of adult men and 3.1% of adult women used one or more tobacco products. The Global Youth Tobacco Survey 20...
April 01, 2009
India has been following English law for certain principles that are well developed in common law. On the issue of medical negligence, India had adopted the principle laid down in the Bolam case which held that a doctor is not negligent if what he has done would be endorsed by a responsible body ...
January 01, 2009
The buying and selling of human organs bothers many people these days, and for good reasons. As an academic teacher in the US who tries to help students test their moral intuitions in bioethics, I resist reflexive claims that the creation of a market for organs is simply wrong. To serve my studen...
January 01, 2009
As a public health priority assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) are low on the epidemiological scale in India. Of the estimated 8-10% infertility in Indian women 98% have secondary sterility-they have been pregnant at least once before but are unable to conceive again. Their problems are du...
January 01, 2009
The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2008,has been posted on the websites of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for comments from the general public. It follows, and draws from, the functional and ethical guidelines for a...