Health

The Union Budget 2024 was announced earlier today and saw quite a few advancements that will shape the future of India. While experts dissect the many different areas that will see a significant impact, its impact on healthcare is promising, especially for cancer treatment, believe healthcare experts.  With a boost to healthcare, India`s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, announced that three cancer medicines Trastuzumab deruxtecan, Osimertinib and Durvalumab have been fully exempted from custom duty for cancer patients. Further, there will also be changes in basic customs duty on X-Ray tubes and flat panel detectors for domestic X-ray machines`s production.  With such important changes, mid-day.com spoke to India`s healthcare experts to get their reactions. Reny Varghese, CAO, Zynova...

The shape of a person`s kneecap may indicate their risk of developing osteoarthritis - a common and debilitating joint disease, suggested a study.  Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) in Australia focussed on potential differences in kneecap shape between men and women, given that women with knee osteoarthritis often experience more severe symptoms. The team made use of CT scans to analyse the kneecaps of healthy individuals and patients awaiting knee replacement surgery. They employed advanced image analysis techniques to create 3D models of the kneecaps and measured the surfaces’ shapes. While the study “did not find distinct differences in kneecap shapes between sexes, it revealed that individuals with osteoarthritis exhibited more pronounced variations in knee...

Women and children are prone to many health issues. Working women, especially, have been facing pressing health concerns in recent times due to fast-paced lifestyles and poor dietary habits. These issues include stress, gynecological problems, etc. In response to these concerns, Medicover Hospitals in Navi Mumbai has introduced ‘SHE CLINICS’ exclusively for corporate working women. The clinic, along with the Women and Child Wing, will focus on the diverse healthcare needs of working women such as managing high-risk deliveries, painless labor, high and normal delivery, advanced laparoscopic surgeries for fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, hysteroscopy for polyps and latest treatment for fertility issues.  Chief guest Honorable Dr Kavita Kishore Choutmol, Mayor of Panvel Municipal Corpo...

Days after a 14-year-old boy succumbed to Nipah virus in Kerala, an alert for the deadly disease has been issued in Rajasthan, the officials said on Monday. Director of Health Directorate Dr. Ravi Prakash Mathur issued an order alerting all the medical college principals, CMHO and PMOs and instructing them to detect the suspected patients coming to the hospital and to share their information. Doctors have said that patients complain of severe headaches and fever. “Its symptoms can become severe over time. The risk of brain infection or encephalitis can increase due to this virus attack,” the doctors said. Instructions have also been passed to keep an eye on the passengers travelling from Kerala. The administration has also alerted the hotel operators to monitor the tourists coming from ...

Experts have said that vector control, hygiene and awareness are the key measures against the Chandipura virus and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) cases in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In Gujarat, symptoms of Chandipura virus were found in kids which has caused some scare. Professor Atul Goel, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Union Health Ministry, and Director of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), along with experts from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) , Kalawati Saran Children`s Hospital, and National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS) reviewed the Chandipura virus and AES cases. They concluded that infectious agents contribute to only a small proportion of AES cases across the country, said the Ministry of H...

Heena Mishra (name changed), a 34-year-old homemaker from Mumbai, had been trying to conceive for ten years before successfully achieving pregnancy through IVF. However, her pregnancy was complicated by diabetes mellitus and anemia, and at 25 weeks, she experienced premature rupture of membranes, necessitating an emergency delivery. The baby, born weighing just 800 grams, cried immediately after birth but required immediate ventilation due to severe respiratory distress. Dr. Nitu Mundhra, Consultant Neonatologist & Pediatrician at Wockhardt Hospitals, Mira Road, led a team to retrieve the baby from the referring hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, the baby received comprehensive care including medication for lung maturation and protection against infections and intraventricular h...

Children who partially lose vision before age 10 may be at risk of developing hearing issues, according to a study led by an international team, including from India.  Researchers from Sankara Nethralaya Eye Hospital in Chennai included 52 participants under 33 years old, who took part in 480 separate trials. In the trial, they were exposed to sounds that were emitted from distances ranging from 1.2m to 13.8m away and also varied between speech, music, or noise. Participants had to estimate the distance the sound came from. The results showed that children who experience partial vision loss found it more difficult to accurately judge the location of a sound than those who lose sight later in life They tended to judge that sounds played from close distances, up to five metres, were act...

There`s an urgent need to boost preventive health to prevent a large burden of diseases, even as a recent study showed an increase in lifespan by 2050, said experts on Saturday.    According to the latest findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2021, published recently in The Lancet journal, global life expectancy is expected to increase by 4.9 years in men and 4.2 years in women by 2050. This is despite the geopolitical, metabolic, and environmental threats. However, people are expected to spend more years in poor health with cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes. "Unless we take preventive health more seriously, our health systems will not be able to cope with the huge burden of the disease," said Lancelot Pinto, consultant...

As many as 13 school kids fell sick at a village in West Bengal`s Bankura district after consuming mushrooms which they cooked at an Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) centre.  They were first taken to the Raipur Rural Hospital with symptoms of food poisoning like vomiting and severe stomach ache. However, after the condition of some of them deteriorated, they were shifted to the Bankura Sammilani Medical Colleg; Hospital where their condition has improved, sources said. It is learned that the mushrooms they ate were collected from a local field and taking advantage of the staff at the ICDS kitchen, the kids themselves cooked and consumed them. Doctors suspect that the kids picked up infected mushrooms, which resulted in food poisoning. The parents of the kids, however, have co...

High stress among women in pregnancy may get passed on to the foetus and raise the risk of depression and obesity among children later, finds a study.  Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Dartmouth College conducted a small study of 46 mothers and 40 toddlers and discovered a link between toddler hair cortisol levels -- a long-term stress biomarker -- and maternal prenatal depression. Published in the American Journal of Human Biology, the study suggests that a child`s long-term stress physiology may be influenced by conditions experienced in utero. Co-author Theresa Gildner highlighted that hair cortisol, which is less invasive than blood tests and more useful than saliva tests, can assess cumulative cortisol exposure over extended periods. "By understanding the long...