Thatched House

Monsoon brings joy to the farmers and relief from the scorching summer heat. But it also brings a host of diseases which cause suffering and death.  According to World Health Organization, an estimated 18 million people die from diarrheal diseases every year. This accounts for about 17% of all deaths among children in the developing countries. And not just deaths, the number of cases are a whopping 4 billion every year. That’s a huge amount of loss if we take physical suffering, work/business/school days lost, and the treatment costs into account. Therefore, even as we or the national health programs are focused on ‘bigger’ health conditions like Cancer, Diabetes, Reproductive Health, Family Planning etc.; common ailments like flu or diarrhea are still the major causes of morbidity and mortality because of the much larger number of people who suffer from them. These common conditions however are often neglected. What hurts most however is that conditions like diarrheal diseases ca...

The problem with being an F1 racing fan is that every time a car overtakes you, you don’t take it very well…But I keep myself grounded knowing that I drive one of the cheapest cars available in the market. I have been a fan of formula1 racing for about 9 years now. From the start, I followed Fernando Alonso of Renault then, now of Ferrari. The sound of the v8 engines is music to my ears and I sit on the edge of my seat as I watch the five red lights illuminate and the cars dash towards the first corner. It’s the skill of the drivers, the quality of the car, the strategy, and luck which determine who wins the race. Teammates driving similar cars can produce very different results. It’s important to push hard but also to slow down and conserve tyres and stick to strategy. Bad strategy can backfire on the best guys, as seen in Canada this year. The guys at the pit stops can also determine the race, as we’ve seen one too many times this season at the McLaren team. Luck also fa...

For a new column in Eastern Mirror Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) simply means that the antimicrobial medicine (say, antibiotic) you used before is not effective anymore against the disease you are suffering from; even if given at the right dose for the right duration. It means that you have developed resistance to that particular antibiotic. One disease may develop resistance to a number of antibiotics (e.g. Muti Drug Resistant TB) that in the course of time, the choice of antibiotics available for that disease becomes limited. AMR is posing a serious threat to the treatment   of   malaria,    TB, sexually   transmitted   infections,   hospital   associated   infections,   epidemic   prone   diseases   like   cholera, typhoid, acute respiratory infections, etc. People with AMR stay sick longer, duration of treatment is longer and treatment cost also increases. Among a number of factors responsible for the rise o...