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Category: Discussions
January 01, 2005
The following statement is based a letter to Mr A Ramadoss, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, signed by 62 individuals and health organisations in India. It was written in response to a national workshop on October 27-29, 2004, organised by Parivar Seva Sanstha in collaboration with t...
January 01, 2005
The Common Minimum Programme lays out the agenda for governance of the present United Progressive Alliance government. This document has been hailed for being a radical departure from the earlier government's neo-liberal approach because it outlines a host of equity-oriented measures for social d...
January 01, 2005
Newer, better contraceptive methods may not result in increased reproductive choice if health systems cannot ensure quality of contraceptive services.
January 01, 2004
In mid-2002, the German multinational Boehringer Ingelheim got much publicity following its announcement that it would donate the drug nevirapine to developing countries for programmes preventing maternal–foetal transmission of HIV. Company spokespeople stated that this donation was a response to...
January 01, 2004
The promotion of any irrational drug combination is bound to be unethical. It is also unethical to promote an irrational claim. The need of determining an ethical code of promotion of medicine is important.
January 01, 2004
Pharmaceutical companies have an important place in medical care, especially in India, a country where the mortality and morbidity due to various diseases of deprivation, communicable diseases in particular, are very high. Every year hundreds of people still die from malaria for which chloroquine...
January 01, 2004
Brand-named prescription drugs are called 'ethical drugs' by the drug industry. Nothing could be more wrong. Many of these ethical drugs are unscientific and irrational combinations (for example Ampiclox), or plain harmful (for example Analgin, Nimesulide, etc.), or harmless but cause wasteful ex...
January 01, 2004
The race for the launch of new drugs, brands and combination drugs has resulted in nearly 50–80 new entries in the market in the year 2002 alone. Is it 'healthy' to have such a flooding of the market with new drugs? Do these new drugs really have benefits over their older congeners as most of the...
January 01, 2004
The Indian pharmaceutical industry is a leading sector of the economy, with drug companies well-represented among the blue chip shares on the stock market. Drugs are also an integral part of medical therapy. However, in my experience as a practising doctor and a health activist, I believe that ou...
January 01, 2003
lectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an important treatment in psychiatry; despite the myth that it is a barbaric and outdated practice, it is as relevant today as it was over six decades ago, when it was first introduced. This is because ECT can be life-saving in catatonic, suicidal, or otherwise h...