Trending To Day

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India (First published in theIndiasaga.com ) Latest cancer data released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 8.8 million people died from cancer in 2015, with about 70% of deaths occurring in low and middle-income countries. One thing common in these deaths is that the disease was diagnosed too late, making the chances of survival slim. Even in countries with optimal health systems and services, many cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when they are harder to treat successfully. This year on World Cancer Day – observed every year on February 4, the WHO released new guidelines, which aim to improve the chances of survival for people   living with cancer by ensuring that health services can focus on diagnosing and treating the disease early enough. “Diagnosing cancer in late stages, and the inability to provide treatment, condemns many people to unnecessary suffering and early death,” says Dr Etienne Krug , Director of WH...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India (First published in theindiasaga.com ) The tobacco industry and its products, which have a deadly impact on people’s lives, cost the world’s economies more than US$ 1 trillion annually in healthcare expenditures and lost productivity, according to findings published in ‘The Economies of Tobacco and Tobacco Control.’ Around 6 million people die annually as a result of tobacco use, with most of them living in developing countries. Policies to control tobacco use, including tobacco tax and price increases, can generate significant government revenues for health and development work, according to this new landmark global report from WHO and the National Cancer Institute of the United States of America . Such measures can also greatly reduce tobacco use and protect people’s health from the world’s leading killers, such as cancers and heart disease. The almost 700-page monograph examines existing evidence on two broad areas of the economics of tobacco ...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India (First published in TheIndiasaga.com ) According to the Global Coalition Against Childhood Pneumonia (GCACP ), pneumonia is the most deadly infectious illness for children under 5 years of  age worldwide. Even as 2000 to 2015, the annual death toll from childhood pneumonia decreased from 1.7 million deaths in 2000 to 920,000 in 2015, approximately 2,500 children still die from pneumonia every day. This amounts to 16% of all child deaths. Children all over the globe are affected by pneumonia, but a 2012 study found that low- and middle-income nations bear the largest burden: less than 1% of childhood deaths occur in developed countries and over 90% of deaths in children under-5 years of age occur in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. 50% of all pneumonia deaths occur in India. Pneumonia has a number of bacterial, viral, and fungal causes. The illness can be caused by bacteria and viruses already present in the body, or it can be transmitted from ...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India (First published in theindiasaga.com) Tuberculosis (TB) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) pose a serious health risk. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) , the risk of developing TB is estimated to be between 26 and 31 times greater in people living with HIV (PLHIV). In 2015, there were an estimated 10.4 million new TB cases worldwide, of which PHLIV accounted for 1.2 million (11%) cases. TB caused 400,000 deaths among the PLHIV of the 1.4 million who died of TB in the same year. The TB-HIV co-infection is potentially lethal combination. When a person develops HIV, his/her immune system loses its ability to fight off infections, making him/her more vulnerable to other infections like TB. PLHIV are especially vulnerable to TB in countries where TB is common. Roughly, 75% of PLHIV who contract TB live in sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries of this region, up to 80% of individuals with active TB disease are also HIV-positive. TB-HIV...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India [First published in India Saga on 20th October 2016] Representatives of close to 179 countries will meet next month for the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties of the global tobacco treaty to take some of the most powerful steps in tobacco control since the World Health Organization treaty’s adoption. At the Conference, to be held at Greater Noida near India’s National Capital New Delhi from November 7 to 12, countries will advance a provision to hold the tobacco industry civilly and criminally liable for its abuses. The governments will also advance policies to exclude the industry from public health policy making at the international and national levels. This comes in the wake of revelations, earlier this year, about British American Tobacco (BAT) Company’s widespread allegations of bribery to civil servants and policy makers in East Africa to undermine public health policies. Litigation against Big Tobacco has compelled the industr...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India [First published in The India Saga ] A latest global report on TB has said that TB cases in India are under-reported with 6.1 million new TB cases notified to the national authorities and reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2015. Notified TB cases increased from 2013 to 2015, mostly due to a 34% increase in notifications. India made TB a notified disease in 2012. TB remains one of the top 10 causes of deaths worldwide in 2015. The WHO Global TB Report 2016 has revised the number of incident (new) cases of TB in India to 2.8 million cases in 2015 and 2.9 million cases in 2014 as against the earlier estimated figures of 2.2 million cases in 2014. Only 56% of incident cases were officially reported in 2014 and 59% in 2015 in India, the report says. The updated estimate of the number of TB deaths in India,  excluding those in people living with HIV (PLHIV) is now put at 478000 in 2015 and 483000 in 2014. In the 2015 global TB repor...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India [First published in The India Saga , New Delhi, India] One-third of India’s population has been found to be hypertensive with 60% of these people unaware of their status, either due to lack of awareness or poor access to good screening tests, a latest survey has found. The initial findings of the Great Indian BP (Blood Pressure) Survey, conducted by the Cardiological Society of India in 24 states on September 21, 2015, found 33% of respondents to be hypertensive. This alarmingly high figure reinforces the need for aggressive cardio-preventive measures. The survey was conducted simultaneously over a period of 8 hours, in government and private hospitals across 700 sites in 100 cities, with the help of 7,500 volunteers and paramedics. More than 1.8 lakh people were studied, making this the single largest single day survey of hypertension done anywhere in the world. Initial findings based on 74,520 results indicate that more than 24,500 who were suffer...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India [First published in theindiasaga.com] India’s private sector is treating an enormous number of patients for TB, almost double the number than has been previously recognized and requires re-doubled efforts to address this burden and strengthen surveillance, a latest Lancet report has said. TB burden estimates in India and worldwide require revision, the report added. There were 17·793 million patient-months of anti TB treatment in the private sector in 2014, which was twice as many as in the public sector. If 40–60% of private-sector TB diagnoses are correct, and if private-sector TB treatment lasts on an average 2–6 months, this implies that 1.19—5.34 million TB cases were treated in the private sector  alone in 2014. The midpoint of these ranges yields an estimate of 2·2 million cases— two to three times higher than currently assumed, according to the study "The number of privately treated tuberculosis cases in India: An estimation from dru...

Aarti Dhar, CNS Correspondent, India [First published in theindiasaga.com ] With two malaria deaths and several patients being treated for the disease in its capital city New Delhi, India needs to do much more if it is to eliminate Malaria by the year 2030. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has set a goal of eliminating the disease from 35 countries across the world including from India and Indonesia. Just a couple of days ago, Sri Lanka became the third country in Asia to eliminate malaria.  If the WHO target is to be achieved, funding for malaria will have to be increased from the existing $ 2.5 billion to $ 8.7 billion. Though malaria cases have come down in India from 2 million to 1.12 million between 2000 and 2005, but the issue continues to be serious. 287 malaria deaths were reported from India last year. As much as 80% of these deaths were in the north and north-eastern part of the country. Target 3.3 of Goal 3, within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commits ...