Category: Asia
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Of honors lost and honor regained: Indian origin of plastic surgery
Neha Chauhan Karnataka, India Figure 1: A singular operation. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) “A skilful dissembler may disguise in a degree, the expression of mouth, the hat may be slouched over the eyes and the chin may be hidden in the impenetrable thicket of beard but the nose will…
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The curse of the blessing
Medha Pande Nainital, India Photo by Pradeep Pande For the wedding of a second cousin, I visited my ancestral village for the first time at the age of twenty-five. The tiny hamlet is in a quaint, expansive valley in the middle Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. The once prosperous region is struggling under the pressure…
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Addressing hunger in Tamilnadu
Dhastagir Sultan Sheriff Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India “There’s enough food on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed.” – Mohandas Gandhi Around 800 million people suffer from hunger globally, a number that may double by 2050. Chronic hunger creates a vicious cycle of malnutrition, stunted growth, and childhood death before the…
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The role of water in Indian culture
Dhastagir Sultan Sheriff Chennai, Tamilnadu, India Fig 1. Water management in Ancient India Changing patterns of weather and rainfall, past policies regarding water release and storage, and a frequently resultant dry basin have forced the central and state governments of India to engage in conserving water, often looking at ways to adapt ancient and…
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Death and dignity – a lesson learned from my father
Dhastagir Sheriff Chennai, Tennessee, India Late President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam “Life Levels All. Death Reveals the Eminent and Dignified” I was working as a professor of biochemistry and as the vice-principal of faculty at the Ambedkar Medical College in Bangalore. It was a welcome change after working in Libya for ten…
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Muthulakshmi Reddi: physician, activist, and social revolutionary
Sumana Vardhan Chicago, Illinois, United States “Muthulakshmi, the medical student.” India International Centre, V. Shanta, 16 Mar. 2012 Born in 1886 under British rule in Tamil Nadu, India, Muthulakshmi Reddi faced an era of gender inequalities and fated child marriage. Despite the social limitations of the time, Reddi’s parents encouraged her interest in learning,…
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Outsourced clinical trials and ethical implications: India the most preferred global clinical trial hub
Persis NaumannPittsburg, Pennsylvania Introduction Pharmaceutical research is a complex social enterprise. With the proliferation of corporate globalization in the healthcare industry, pharmaceutical companies from western developed countries have increasingly offshored and outsourced global biopharmaceutical clinical trials to developing countries. The power of global pharmaceutical industries is extensive. It is important to understand the structure of…
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When a movie ticket to the battered may help!
Rema Sundar Trivandrum, Kerala, India No Discrimination! ‘The World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics’ by United Nations Statistics Division (Creative Commons) Domestic violence awareness through film When four-time Grammy Award winner Tracy Chapman crooned “Last night I heard the screaming,” she was reflecting on a global public health problem. Instances of abuse and violence…
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Timelessness of the intangible
Bill Wolak New Jersey, United States Dileep Jhaveri, 2011 Born in 1943, Dileep Jhaveri is one of the most dynamic and articulate poets writing in India today. Like the Czech poet Miroslav Holub, his poetry mixes the objectivity of a scientist with an indefatigable lyricism. For Jhaveri, poetry is a theatre of ideas, emotions,…
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Lifeline Express: the magic train hospital of India
Satish Saroshe Indore, India, United States Photograph of the Lifeline Express is from the Indian Health Initiative blog. Lifeline Express, colloquially known as the Magic Train Hospital of India, is the world’s first modern technologically advanced hospital-train. Established in 1991 and completing twenty-three years of service, it has travelled the length and breadth of…