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Category: Letters
January 01, 2014
As Syria completes two years of western sanctions (2011–13), their dramatic effects on health are being highlighted with first reports of starvation deaths among children in the suburbs of Damascus. Although heavy fighting has taken place in this area, experts had predicted for some ...
January 01, 2014
The working group of the World Medical Association (WMA) has published a revised draft of the Declaration of Helsinki for public consultation till June 15, 2013. There are many positive changes in the document with respect to compensation, education of investigators, informed consent in the case ...
January 01, 2014
While most professions have national level bodies governing the pay structure of their teachers, there is no functional body to govern the pay of medical teachers. The result is that the net pay of teachers in the central institutions (such as AIIMS, and the medical colleges of Chandigarh U...
October 01, 2013
Communicating with the parents of children who are extremely sick or dying in the intensive care unit (ICU) is an extremely challenging task. The physician in charge of intensive care, apart from administering the routine medical treatment, has other vital roles to play, such as communicating the...
October 01, 2013
It is disturbing to hear the numerous revelations of malpractice and ethical lapses committed by members of the medical profession. Technology is often misused, with patients being made to undergo unnecessary examinations, hospitalisation and even surgery. In many small nursing homes, doctors hav...
July 01, 2013
JME has rightly focused on the medical humanities with a view to sensitising doctors towards their duties and responsibilities as well as towards an awareness of patients as human beings, to be treated with dignity. The articles related to medical humanities emphasise the need to include...
July 01, 2013
The Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Biotechnology has issued draft guidelines for stem cell research in 2012. A thorough discussion among ethics committee members is necessary to improve these guidelines.
April 01, 2013
Over the last few years, the media have been repeatedly focusing on corruption in healthcare. Sometimes, speakers on television channels fling allegations at the entire medical community. This biased picture of pervasive corruption is resented by a majority of doctors.
April 01, 2013
Corruption is defined as the misuse or betrayal of public trust, in order to achieve a personal or private goal, instead of seeking the best for the community or country. This is a serious problem for health systems in many places. It could lead to a waste of resources, and, even worse, to utterl...
April 01, 2013
Homosexuality is not a new issue in western medical literature; but an empathetic approach to it in the medical literature in India is a recent phenomenon. Equality in providing healthcare is not being practised, as evidenced by homophobia among doctors, more so in the Indian sub-continent where ...