Gaya: The Cabinet is finally set to discuss the encephalitis outbreak that has claimed the lives of hundreds of children this year. The disease is a cause for alarm not just in eastern UP but Bihar as well. Ten months ago, Pinky was a normal child who played, went to school and helped at home. But she is crippled after she survived the deadly mosquito-borne Encephalitis. Despite this being a...
10:21 AM, Oct 11, 2012
Bangalore: Eight people have died in Bangalore due to dengue and the number of people affected has doubled since July 2012. Bangalore is in the grip of the dengue fever. But what is especially alarming now is the rate at which it is spreading across the city. In October, 700 cases have been confirmed, up from the 373 in July. More than 20 people have died of the fever in...
11:30 AM, Oct 10, 2012
New Delhi: A new mental health bill will soon be presented to the Cabinet for approval. But activists say the bill is only an eyewash. India has the highest suicide rates in the world, said a Lancet study. 10 per cent adult Indians have mental health disorders, according to the World Health Organisation and an estimated 1 million Indians are in need of mental health services. 25 years since the...
10:57 AM, Oct 10, 2012
London: A British researcher who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine was once dismissed by his school teacher about his ambition to become a scientist as "quite ridiculous", the Guardian reported on Tuesday. Sir John Gurdon, 79, of Cambridge University, on Monday shared the prize in physiology or medicine - and 744,000-pound cash - with Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, 50. Their ground-breaking work has given scientists fresh insights into...
10:43 AM, Oct 10, 2012
New Delhi: On World Mental Health Day CNN-IBN finds out how being mentally ill is still a stigma. Thirty mentally ill women have been abandoned in Delhi. They have been living in a dilapidated amphitheatre for the past three years in Delhi. Open to the harsh Delhi summers and winters, the amphitheatre in the city's Kabir Basti has been home to the 30 mentally disabled women. After a 2009 order...
10:12 AM, Oct 10, 2012
Karachi: A waterborne parasite known as Naegleria fowleri, brain eating amoeba, has killed 10 people in the Pakistan's financial hub in recent months prompting an emergency meeting of health and water department officials. Sindh Health Minister Sagheer Ahmed said that 10 deaths had been confirmed from the brain eating amoeba since July including three this month and most of them were young people who used public swimming pools. "The meeting...
02:32 AM, Oct 10, 2012
New Delhi: For 35-year-old Ritika (name changed), everything seemed a burden. She suddenly started losing interest in both work and people around her. Even ordinary tasks seemed Herculean to her. A call centre employee, she no longer paid attention even to her personal life. "I did not feel like getting up in the morning, I had to push myself to office, and I was a chronic late-comer. If I was...
03:25 PM, Oct 09, 2012
Washington: Wonder why wine accords so well with a meal. The secret lies in the sensitivity of our mouths, say researchers. A nice glass of wine goes well with a hearty steak. The astringent wine and fatty meat are like the yin and yang of the food world, sitting on opposite ends of a sensory spectrum. Now taste researchers think they may understand why that is. They offer a whole...
12:33 PM, Oct 09, 2012
Indore: One more person died of swine flu, taking the death toll due to the virus to seven in Indore division of the state since May this year, a district health official said on Monday. A 28-year-old man from Jalapura village near here was admitted to a private hospital on September 25. He tested positive for the H1N1 virus on October 4 at the ICMR laboratory, the official said. As...
03:47 PM, Oct 08, 2012
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the central government to provide details of clinical trials being conducted throughout the country, their side effects and deaths, if any. The apex court bench of Justice R.M. Lodha and Justice Anil R. Dave, while asking the central government to furnish the details, also issued notice to all state governments, seeking to know whether they were being kept in the loop regarding...
01:12 PM, Oct 08, 2012
New Delhi: The end of the monsoon season has once again resulted in a spurt of cases of swine influenza, also knows as swine flu, across India. Pune is the worse affected city in the country. 226 people were affected by the H1N1 infection killing 9 between June and September this year. According to reports, four people died in September alone in Pune. In Madhya Pradesh, over a hundred persons...
10:08 AM, Oct 08, 2012
Thiruvananthapuram: A Kerala High Court observation that the government should consider banning toddy had ruffled feathers in a state where many consider it a "health drink". With the court now reluctantly accepting that a ban was not feasible, it's cheers once again. The Kerala High Court had last month asked the state government to consider banning toddy but on Thursday reversed this, with the government assuring it would ensure the...
10:54 AM, Oct 06, 2012
Sydney: Scientists have cracked the code of how mosquitoes develop immunity to virus, potentially opening the way to better vaccines for diseases such as dengue. A team from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Lab, in Geelong, has shown Vago, a protein previously identified in fruit flies, is released by infected mosquito cells, warning other cells to defend against the invading virus. Mosquito-transmitted emerging viruses, such as dengue,...
04:04 PM, Oct 05, 2012
London: A new US study has found a daily slice of watermelon could help prevent heart disease by halting the build-up of harmful cholesterol and also be a help in weight control. Scientists who carried out studies on mice fed a high-fat diet found the fruit halved the rate at which 'bad' low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, accumulated, Daily Mail reported. LDL is a form of cholesterol that leads to clogged...
01:27 PM, Oct 05, 2012
London: An Indian origin doctor in London went the Gandhian way to take on authorities at the Addenbrooke Hospital in Cambridge. He has claimed that they sacked him for blowing the whistle on healthcare malpractices in the UK. He carried out an unusual Gandhian outside the Department of Health in London, across from Downing Street. Dr Narinder Kapur was sacked from Addenbrooke Hospital in Cambridge for blowing the whistle on...
10:13 AM, Oct 04, 2012
New Delhi/Mumbai: The Cabinet is expected to take a decision on the proposed pharma price control policy on Thursday, which has been in discussion since 2007. But five years, two GoMs and a Supreme Court deadline later, drug experts say there are major loopholes in it. The question is whether the new policy will cut down drug prices or will medical bills go higher up in the long term. The...
08:50 AM, Oct 04, 2012
Copenhagen: Chloroquine, an efficacious old drug, is once again beginning to work against malaria, one of the most widespread scourges in the world. Scientists and doctors fear that the malaria parasite will develop resistance to the current frontline treatment against malaria: Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs). Resistance (to drugs) monitoring at the University of Copenhagen shows that in several African countries, malaria parasites are succumbing to chloroquine, the American Journal of...
05:18 PM, Oct 03, 2012
Washington: Indoor tanning beds can cause non-melanoma skin cancer, and the risk is greater the earlier one starts tanning, suggests a new scientific analysis. Indoor tanning is already an established risk factor for malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, but which is less common. Now, the new study confirms that indoor tanning also significantly increases chances of non-melanoma skin cancers, the commonest of skin cancers, the British Medical...
12:28 PM, Oct 03, 2012
Wellington: Vitamin D does not reduce the severity of colds, even for those who received a monthly dose of 100,000 units in a trial, says a study. The association of Vitamin D deficit and susceptibility to viral respiratory tract infections has been unclear, said the University of Otago study. David R. Murdoch, University of Otago, New Zealand, and colleagues conducted a randomized trial to examine the effect of Vitamin D...
10:34 AM, Oct 03, 2012
