New Delhi: All antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs and other habit-forming medicines may soon have a label, warning users against over the counter medication, according to the latest draft notification by the Health Ministry.
According to Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), India records 70 thousand new multi-drug resistant tuberculosis cases every year. India has already switched to using the second line drug Artemisinin for Malaria widely and nearly 5 per cent of all HIV/AIDS cases are drug resistant according to the WHO.
There is also the larger burden of drug resistant bacterial infections, especially hospital infections. Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) Director Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan said, "The fact is that we are soon approaching a stage where you as an individual will know someone who died of a drug resistant infection. Ten years ago we didn't really have much issues with carbo penum resistance in gram negatives and now we have in this class of bacteria called entrobacteria we have very common carbo penum resistance."
Despite that, the government's proposed national antibiotic policy to curb drug resistance was shelved in October 2011. With that, measures like banning over-the-counter sale of third generation antibiotics and colour coding the antibiotics, were also shelved....
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08:50 AM, Apr 04, 2013
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
San Diego: A co-founder of the group behind a viral video about a brutal African warlord was detained by police and hospitalised after witnesses saw him running through streets in his underwear, screaming and banging his fists on the pavement. Jason Russell of Invisible Children was hospitalized for exhaustion less than two weeks after the release of the 30-minute video he narrated about warlord Joseph Kony, said Ben Keesey, the...
09:35 AM, Mar 17, 2012
New York: The director of a video sensation that calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive rebel leader of a Ugandan militia group, agreed on Friday with skeptics who have called the film oversimplified, saying it was deliberately made that way. The 30-minute YouTube film called 'Kony 2012', which by Friday had been viewed on YouTube more than 58 million times, aims to wake up the world to...
01:15 PM, Mar 12, 2012
New Delhi: A video calling for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army militia group in Uganda, swept across the Internet this week, attracting a wave of support on Twitter and Facebook along with a skeptical backlash against a little-known team of filmmakers based in San Diego. The 30-minute YouTube video was the centrepiece of a campaign that spread on Twitter beginning on Tuesday...
05:45 PM, Mar 09, 2012
San Francisco: A video calling for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army militia group in Uganda, swept across the Internet this week, attracting a wave of support on Twitter and Facebook along with a skeptical backlash against a little-known team of filmmakers based in San Diego. The 30-minute YouTube video was the centrepiece of a campaign that spread on Twitter beginning on Tuesday...
09:59 AM, Mar 09, 2012
New Delhi: India is hosting a global summit on antibiotic resistance in the capital this week, even as the NDM-1 superbug has now made its way into the neonatal ICUs in the country that is affecting and killing new-born babies. Because of antibiotic resistance, nearly 60 thousand of new-born babies are dying every year in India of sepsis, a treatable blood infection, despite getting lifesaving antibiotics. "The organisms in the...
10:40 AM, Oct 05, 2011
New Delhi: The first ever global forum on antibiotic resistance was kicked off in the Capital on Tuesday. India is hosting the summit following the superbug controversy that put the spotlight on the problem of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic usage has doubled over the past five years in the country. While access to these life-saving medicines has increased, it's also given rise to antibiotic resistance. The government planned to combat the...
09:24 AM, Oct 04, 2011
![Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan]( "Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan")
Earlier this month, a meeting of health ministers representing the member states of the World Health Organization's South-East Asia Region recognized antimicrobial resistance as a ...
12:20 PM, Sep 30, 2011
Chennai: In a significant discovery that can be a major breakthrough in biotechnology, Indian mycologists have discovered fungi spores, considered as being able to withstand a temperature of 100-115 degrees celsius. Spores are reproductive cells capable of developing into a new individual without fusion with another reproductive cell. The team of fungi researchers found the heat-resistant spores in dead leaves. "It took us around one and a half years to...
12:44 PM, Jul 24, 2011
New Delhi: A study conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed that more than half (53 per cent) of Delhiites surveyed self prescribe antibiotics. Moreover, 1 in 4 of those surveyed stop taking them once they felt better, instead of finishing the entire course. While 1 in 4 Delhiites (25 per cent) treat regular fever with antibiotics, 18 per cent of those surveyed re-use antibiotics in the family....
09:33 AM, Apr 07, 2011
Cape Town: The ICC should consider using undercover investigations to identify corrupt cricketers as one of 10 recommendations to fight match-fixing made by the MCC's cricket committee on Tuesday. The MCC committee, made up of former international players and umpires, said the mystery shopper operations would be preferably directed at somebody already suspected. Following a two-day meeting in South Africa, the recommendation was one of the proposals made by the...
03:48 PM, Apr 09, 2008
