Health

Warming up to kill

Deaths, diseases to increase with rising temperatures: WHO

- 140,000 excess deaths due to global warming in 2004
- 70,000 excess deaths recorded in Europe in the heat wave of summer 2003. Extreme high temperatures can cause deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, particularly among the elderly
- 1.2 million deaths every year is caused by urban air pollution. High temperatures also raise levels of ozone and other pollutants in the air that exacerbate cardiovascular and respiratory diseases
- 300 million people are affected by asthma. This number is likely to increase as pollen and allergens that trigger it increase during extreme heat
- 60,000: Number of people who die every year in weather-related natural disasters, mainly in developing countries. This is thrice the number of such deaths in the 1960s
- 50 per cent: Likely decrease in production of staple foods due to rising temperatures and changing rainfall pattern in some African countries
- 2 billion more people would be exposed to dengue by 2080 due to climate change
- 2.2 million people die of communicable diseases like diarrhoea every year. Their numbers will increase with increase in migration caused by climate change. More than half the world's population lives within 60 km of the sea and may have to migrate

Source: World Health Organization

The failure to address issues related to the disease-illness dichotomy and the cure-healing divide and to bridge the gap between these part-perceptions is a major cause of patient dissatisfaction. The increased cost of health care and the urban-centric nature of our health delivery system make it unaffordable and inaccessible to the majority of Indians. The health-hospital, pharmaceutical and medical education industries, which profit from disease and illness, also complicate the situation. These factors have resulted in dissatisfaction with quality of health care for the vast majority of the population and a crisis in health care in India. The problematic conceptualisation of disease and illness which underpins many of these issues is highlighted.
Bridging the disease-illness divide in medicine, K.S. Jacob, The Hindu, June 12, 2009

The single most important international organisation that plays a role in the health policy of the developing countries is the World Health Organisation. In the year 1978, a landmark for WHO because of the Declaration it made in Alma Ata, it acknowledged and incorporated the significance of public health as the necessary perspective of health policy worldwide. As part of the Alma Ata Declaration, there was recognition that traditional medicine can play a worthwhile role in improving the health care of a majority of people in the world.
The New WHO Policy: Towards a Global Consensus?

by , WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005, 01 January, 2005

This essay is to be conceived in two parts. The first part is an exegesis of an eighteenth-century tract on the practice of smallpox inoculation in Bengal written by a Scottish medic. Cited repeatedly in the contemporary history and anthropology of smallpox in India, it has been invariably used to highlight the technique of inoculation in eighteenth-century India. Caught in disciplinary cleaving between anthropology and history, its original import has not been addressed. The exegesis in restoring the text to its intended import, argues that it offers a theory of smallpox, and in this theory the technique of inoculation is a moment in larger therapeutics.
Preparing for the Pox: A Theory of Smallpox in Bengal and Britain

by Harish Naraindas, Asian Journal of Social Science, 01 January, 2003

The basic premise of the paper is that Western medicine’ sco-opting of specific technologies and materials from other (indigenous) medical traditions,stripped of the original theories underlying their use, has problematic consequences for the practitioners and patients of both source and recipient traditions.The paper begins by illustrating the historical continuity of this process by way of an example from India’s colonialera.The fact that specific practices or materials are regarded as biomedically useful because they ‘work’ (are efficacious) does not mean that the ‘traditional’ theories underlying them are seen as correct.
Of spineless babies and folic acid : Evidence and efficacy in biomedicine and ayurvedic medicine

by Harish Naraindas, Social Science & Medicine, 18 January, 1996

Was the 2006 epidemic of chikungunya in South India abioterrorist attack? A fact-sheet on chemical and bio-logical weapons at www.cbwinfo.comidescribes the chikun-gunya virus (CV) thus:`highly infective and disabling but ...not transmissible between people\'.Hence,`it would mostlikely be dispensed as an aerosol or by the release of infectedmosquitoes.The disabling joint pain and fever,the lack of asuitable animal reservoir in western countries and its lack oflethality make it a very \"clean\"weapon that could be usedagainst key civilian installations\'.
Epidemics of Fever : Allopathic Prevention or Alternative Cure

by Harish Naraindas, Journal of Health & Development, 01 January, 2007

It seems to be an article of faith that the AYUSH of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, to which can now be added Naturopathy and Yoga, is some kind of moribund life form on the margins of society, or debris floating at a different pace on the edge of a fast moving river whose ‘mainstream’ is allopathy. This is despite the fact that allopathy does not as yet service the health needs of the majority; or despite the fact that number of ISM colleges of medicine have recently outstripped MBBS colleges, or that ISM pharmaceuticals and ‘cosmoceuticals’ are turning into a multimillion dollar global industry.
Mainstreaming AYUSH and Ayushing Obstetrics

by Harish Naraindas, , 27 June, 2008

This paper was prompted by two editorials which appeared in the Hindu sometime in September-October last year. The articles said that Chikungunya is essentially not an infective disease and that it does not kill, and there is no vaccine and there is no cure, and therefore the only thing that we can offer for Chikungunya is supportive therapy. The editorials then went on to say that they were outraged that the state governments of South India have said that Indian systems have the drugs to cure this disease. The editorial even had the gumption to say that when the allopathic system has said that there is no cure, why the state governments were endorsing these \"unproven\" drugs. They are not only endorsing it but actively distributing it through the public health programme.
Indian Systems of Medicine, Bioterrorism and the Science of Epidemics

by Harish Naraindas, , 01 January, 1970

This is an academic study of Civil Society intervention and I am not a part of any civil society organisation. In this presentation, I am trying to understand the issues that are being raised about Ayurveda in particular and to some extent traditional and indigenous medicine systems in general.I want to begin by saying two things. One, we need to start with the understanding that Policy is a reflection of power relations in society. Policy is not about what is the most appropriate. Policy is not about what is technically the best thing in a situation. It will claim to be any or all of these things. But fundamentally, at its heart it is a reflection of the current power structure and power relations in society. And that’s why policy is deeply political.
Indigenous Medical Systems and Ayurveda

by Madhulika Banerjee, Delhi University, 01 January, 1970

This paper studies the problem of poor health outcomes in India from the demand side, and using the unit level data from the 60th round of the National Sample Survey analyses the determinants of not accessing medical care. This analysis is confined to persons who have reported being ill within 15 days of the survey but have not sought either public or private professional medical services. There are systematic variations in accessing healthcare between urban and rural areas, as well as between males and females in each sector. While in the rural areas, the demand for healthcare increases significantly with the education level of the head of the household, in the urban areas the evidence is mixed. Richer economic sections constitute a larger proportion of sick persons who do not access medical care, especially in urban areas. Paradoxically, among poor households, which cite financial reasons for not accessing healthcare, women are less likely to be discriminated in rural than in urban areas.
Untreated Morbidity and Demand for Healthcare in India: AnAnalysis of National Sample Survey Data

by Anit N Mukherjee, Krishanu Karmakar, Economic & Political Weekly, 15 November, 2008

India has always had a very large private health sector, especially for ambulatory healthcare services. This includes providers of modern medicine as well as traditional practitioners. Hospital services until the mid-v 70s were predominantly in the public domain. Medical education was almost a public monopoly till the late eighties. The private sector grew rapidly postv 80s, but even today 75 per cent of outturn of medical graduates is from public medical schools.
Tracing Privatisation of Healthcare in India

by Ravi Duggal, Lok Samvad, 01 September, 2008

The availability of multiple data sources and new methods of estimation resulted in a more accurate estimate of the HIV population in India in 2006. A critical review of the data and methods used in the past and current estimation processes is offered in this article.
What Lies Behind the Fall in the HIV Population in India?

by Arvind Pandey, D C S Reddy, M Thomas, Economic & Political Weekly, 27 December, 2008

Use of pesticides in the agriculture sector poses a serious environmental and public health problem. The relationship between the extent of pesticide-use and signs and symptoms of illnesses due to exposure among farmers of Thanjavur District (South India) was assessed. 631 farmers were interviewed using pre-tested interview questionnaires during a cross sectional survey (537 men and 94 women). 433 (68.6%) farmers (of whom 4 were women) sprayed pesticides by themselves and therefore were directly exposed to pesticides. More than 75% of farmers used either \"moderately\" or \"highly hazardous\" pesticides . 88% did not use any form of protection, while handling pesticides. About 50% of sprayers mixed different brands of pesticides, many of which were substitutable to each other.
Use of pesticides & its impact on human health: a case of farmers in South India

by Chitra Grace,V.R. Muraleedharan, T. Swaminathan, Veeraraghavan, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology, 01 January, 2008

If people do not use endosulfanproperly, why blame endosul-fan, blame the users.\" This wasan all-too-familiar spiel the industrydished out when confronted with evi-dence indicting the pesticide\'s deadlyeffect on people.But this was no industry-speak. Itwas the official line of the Indian gov-ernment to block the inclusion of endo-sulfan in a list of chemicals slated forglobal information sharing on its healthhazards (see: \"Asbestos, endosulfanescape blacklist\", p 18). As NGOobservers, we watched with disdain asthe Indian government towed thechemical industry line.
To industry\'s tune

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