HOME
Category: Letters
April 30, 2023
I have been practising medicine in an under-served rural setting since 1976, and have published around 109 papers in PubMed-indexed journals — including The Lancet, BMJ, NEJM and several tropical medicine journals — on scorpion and snakebite cases causing acute life-threatening conditions. I have...
April 30, 2023
In November 2020, the Central government amended the Central Council of Indian Medicine Regulations, 2016, to introduce formal training in Shalya (general surgery) and Shalakya (diseases of ear, nose, throat, ENT, eye, head, oro-dentistry) specialisations for postgraduate students of Ayurveda [1].
April 30, 2023
The gradual move towards telemedicine for the care and service provided to patients with addictive disorders [1], has been accentuated during the pandemic [2-4]. Telemedicine facilitates expert medical care to those situated at distant locations, and reduces the indirect and direct healthcare cos...
June 14, 2022
The duration of the pandemic over the last two years has witnessed the steering of multiple technological interventions by governments. These interventions — ranging from contact tracing applications to vaccine certificates — have been developed in the specific context of the pandemic, and were m...
June 14, 2022
The combined discipline of Yoga & Naturopathy (Y&N) constitutes one of the official indigenous medical systems under the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), Government of India (GoI). The GoI has recently regulated all the systems under AY...
July 23, 2022
With a fresh degree in Biotechnology, I was keen on getting some work experience before deciding on further studies. I wrote emails to several leading researchers in the country. A few responded and one offered me an internship. After a brief interview, I was on board, working in her laboratory. ...
October 28, 2022
Technology is not only changing the way doctors and patients communicate, but also how physicians interact with other healthcare providers. This interaction has increasingly begun to be over online media such as telemedicine networks/instant messaging apps/social media/emails. The Covid-19 pandem...
October 28, 2022
The Gazette of India: Extraordinary published "The National Commission for Indian System of Medicine Notification." on February 17, 2022 [1]. This official document of the Government of India is worrying as it institutionalises a world view that has been gradually turning the ancient science of A...
October 28, 2022
The Covid-19 pandemic has provoked a deep and extensive health crisis and a trail of deaths globally and in Brazil (1). Brazil had reached the mark of 22,499,525 cases and 619,937 deaths by January 10, 2022 (2). The current Jair Bolsonaro government took too long to recognise the severity of the ...
July 23, 2022
It has been widely suspected that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic, escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology because of sloppy safety procedures and that it was man-made as part of the so-called gain-of-function research at the institute [1]. If this is the case, ...