India's healthcare bureaucracy

Should they be called bio-terrorists?

Stagnation as a culture

WATER is for flowing. When made to stagnate, it buzzes deafeningly of a culture of deliberate ignorance. Look at the misfortune of the people of …

If bird flu arrives, what will India do?

India is a hotbed not only of strange diseases but of stranger disease surveillance and control institutions. Every year, known and unknown …

A patent row

Can the public sector take responsibility to develop drugs for neglected diseases?

Lake Manchar is dead

Pakistan's largest freshwater lake is drowned by effluents

The black fever

While the nation's attention is focused on the caste killings in Jehanabad, a silent but deadlier killer is striking terror in Bihar. Kala-azar, …

Fowl Play

Is an avian flu pandemic imminent? As panic sends the world into a flutter, the Indian response still struggles to take wing, discover padmaparna …

A plague on this country

The plague today holds the same threshold of dread that it did in the 14th century. So when the Black Death struck India late last month, the …

4 flu mutants

Seven eminent virologists discuss the implications with Down To Earth

The muck stops here

Indian lakes are no longer serene waterbodies. Instead, they have become stinking cesspools, a result of continuous inflow of sewage and massive …

Why diseases are "mysterious"

The government's public health system is completely defunct. Of late, there has been an alarming rise in disease outbreaks in the country. …

SARS Wars

SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is making the world sneeze. Even as the global health community struggles to unmask a new, deadly, …

A plague on this country

The plague today holds the same threshold of dread that it did in the 14th century. So when the Black Death struck India late last month, the …

Waterhunt

Going thirsty in the Kerala backwaters

Chikungunya spreads its tentacles

Chikungunya, a viral disease borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, has assumed epidemic proportions in large swathes of the country, especially …

Anatomy of the plague

The Black Death is an established phenomenon the world over, so there is no point pillorying India alone

Counting out pestilence

The patterns that diseases furrow among large sections of a population provide clues to check epidemics

Why's malaria taking its toll?

Assam faces a spate of malaria deaths. As the disease assumes near epidemic proportions, it is becoming increasingly clear that the government …

Inviting the plague

With all its wealth and affluence, Surat remains the least concerned about health and hygiene

Outbreak Outrage

There is a suspicion among African biomedics about the well projected linking of the continent's environment with the emergence of lethal viruses …

How did it get so bad?

Ostrich policy and bad science. In Bihar, embankments built by government to prevent floods have been counter-productive

Spawning grounds

Environmental changes have led to the emergence of kala-azar in new areas

Is the alarm justified?

Yes. The disease is spreading fast. Yet there is little scientific data to devise a strategy to deal with it

World is at risk

With scientists undertaking controversial flu virus experiments

Learning from experience