Category: Asia
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Muthulakshmi Reddi: physician, activist, and social revolutionary
Sumana VardhanChicago, Illinois, United States 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, breaking tradition to allow her to continue education past secondary school. Reddi applied to…
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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 SundarTrivandrum, Kerala, India 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 do not discriminate based on wealth, race, or education. ‘The World’s Women 2015″ report from the United Nations …
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Timelessness of the intangible
Bill WolakNew Jersey, United States 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, and theoretical propositions. Dileep Jhaveri…
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Lifeline Express: the magic train hospital of India
Satish SarosheIndore, India, United States 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 the country, bringing medical aid and relief to the remotest and most inaccessible areas…
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The Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore
Preeti ShanbagMumbai, India The Christian Medical College Hospital was founded by Ida Sophia Scudder in 1900, in response to a calling. Daughter of a North American missionary couple working in India, she was born in Tindivanum in south India in 1870. Her earliest experiences of India were of the terrible famine of the 1880s and…
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Remembering an uncrowded world
Aroop MangalikAlbuquerque, New Mexico, United States I was born in the year of the Elephant – an auspicious year according to the elders – with 30 other million born in that year. My father had hopes for me, hopes that I would see what he did not, achieve what he could not, and enjoy comforts…
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Risus sardonicus
Arunachalam KumarMangalore, India There is a pithy adage that goes around in medical circles, “Those who can – DO, those who can’t – TEACH.” Comments like this notwithstanding, some still commit their professional lives to medical teaching as an attractive and rewarding career option. But, who of rational mind, one may ask, would choose anatomy…
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The boys who did not come back from the brink
Ravi ShankarLalitpur, Nepal Lying unconscious on the stone floor, the 14-year-old boy bled profusely from a huge slash across his chest. Ram laughed, the sound resembling the screeching gears of a heavily loaded truck groaning slowly uphill. I frantically tried to staunch the flow of blood with towels and clothes—Ram’s maniacal laughter an incongruous accompaniment—as…
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The patient on the brink
Ravi ShankarNepal The St. Xavier’s hospital in the village of Ellakkal is in a magnificent location nestled in the Western Ghats of the Idukki district in the Southern Indian state of Kerala. The Ghats are a series of hills that reach about 2,000 meters high and run parallel to India’s west coast around 75 kilometers…