Will Bengal allow high decibel firecrackers?

Five ordinary citizens have been killed in West Bengal between 1997 and 2011 while trying to stop bursting of firecrackers and use of loud microphones.

Attractive cigarette packs may go up in smoke

Rapid privatisation has worsened health care services in poor and middle-income nations: study

What should cash strapped low- and middle-income countries do to improve access to health care? Should they strengthen the public health sector or the private sector? The question remains unresolved, but often funds are redirected from the public exchequer to the private health sector, even though, there is not enough data to guide policy. Recently, the International Monetary Fund suggested that countries should increase private sector provision in health care as part of loan conditions to reduce government debt.

Government bans blood test for TB

The Union health ministry has banned blood tests to detect tuberculosis while terming these tests useless. The ban came into effect on June 7, almost a year after the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an advisory to countries to stop conducting these tests for TB.

Diesel exhaust linked to lung cancer

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, gives its scientific verdict that diesel engine exhaust can cause lung cancer in humans. In its report released on June 12, IARC has reclassified diesel exhaust from its group 2A list of probable carcinogens to its group 1 list of substances that have definite links to cancer.

Almost half of doctors in US from lower-income countries

While India may be lavishly spending to nurture medical graduates, they turn up practicing in the US causing financial loss to the country, says a new study.  The study by researchers from Stanley Medical Research Institute in Maryland, US, compared the investments made by lower-income countries like India and the Philippines in training medical graduates with the financial losses the countries face when these graduates serve in other countries.

Unhealthy countryside

Skinny and visibly weak, 39- year-old Rajkumar Haribhajan Patil had been suffering from contractions in the chest, and feeling panicky and restless for the past five years. In January 2010, he suffered severe palpitations and was rushed to a private clinic in Warud, in Maharashtra’s Nagpur district. Doctors diagnosed him with hypertension.

The link between blood pressure and suicides

An urban doctor whom I contacted for the story on hypertension in rural India told me that I would never be able to link stress to the increased incidence of the disease.