Primaquine for P.vivax malaria - 5 days or 14?: A short summary

Post by Liaquat Roopesh Johnson, currently employed as a member of the faculty in a private medical college in South India. Roopesh has a post-graduate degree in Community Medicine from the Christian Medical College, Vellore. 

The Anopheles mosquito.
Root word is Anofelis, in Greek,
which means good-for-nothing!  

When it comes to P.vivax malaria, many of us continue to follow the 5-day primaquine regimen. A recent update of  a Cochrane Systematic Review compares the 5 day primaquine regimen with the 14 day primaquine regimen recommended by the WHO. The following is a short summary of the review. (Click here to go to the detailed summary)

Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia and South-East Asia. According to WHO estimates, there were between 135-287 million cases of malaria in 2012. Of the estimated 473,000-789,000 deaths due to malaria in the same year, 77% were children less than 5 years of age.

CHILDHOOD OBESITY: A WEIGHTY CONCERN

In recent times, there’s been a lot of talk about childhood obesity and one often doesn’t picture developing nations (like India) having this problem. You might be surprised to know that in many low and middle income countries (LMICs), where three square meals a day is hard to come by for most. The ‘obesity epidemic’ in children is on the rise, and as a mother of two young children, this is a matter of concern to  me.

Snakebite: it's not just about the victim

Vishal 

Hello, everyone! My name is Vishal Santra, and I am currently residing at Vellore. My area of interest is wildlife conservation, particularly reptiles and snakes. I have been studying snakes and trying to understand them for about 12 years now.

I graduated in English Honors and completed my masters in Environmental Studies. I have worked on many projects that directly or indirectly involved reptiles, both as a volunteer and on a professional basis.  As you can see from this short intro, there’s not much to write home about as far as I am concerned, but I can assure you that when it comes to snakes, more specifically, snakebites, there’s quite a bit.

Let me start with a personal account.

RABIES - A serious but preventable public health problem

www. who-rabies-bulletin.org

 My childhood pets were always dogs of varied breeds. My dad  was of the view that if you owned dogs, they had to be guard dogs  (and guard dogs and many other dogs, for that matter, bite).  

 Having worked on a rabies vaccine trial earlier, I learnt that when  you have dogs, getting bitten is inevitable. However, quite often,    pet owners don’t take being bitten by pet dogs seriously and do    not seek help following a bite. If pet dogs are not vaccinated  regularly, then the risk of rabies is predictable. 

Rabies is a lethal  but preventable disease and is a grave public health problem in  low income countries.

The quiet killer

image courtesy: who.int

August 1-7: World Breastfeeding Week 

Just as the 19th century was the century of the British Empire and the 20th, the century of the strongest superpower, the 21st century is spoken of as the Asian Century, the century when Asian politics and culture will be the dominant one.

In the last two decades, South Asia has seen unprecedented economic growth. The World Bank reports that during this time, the no of poor - those living with less than $1.25 a day – came down from 61% to 36%. Even with all this progress, South Asia has 571 million poor, which is 44% of the developing world’s poor.

As for India, since 2007, it is, as per World Bank standards, a middle-income country. Yet, in 2013, the same standards pronounce it home to a third of the world’s poorest people.

And so, in this country, the desperately poor are, still, everywhere.

People like me, the privileged lot, rarely come into contact with them - unless our profession or vocation demands it. We are, however, often in touch with those who are illiterate or inadequately educated; those who, as a result, can never aspire to what would be considered a decent job. And so, all along, I’ve been convinced that ‘the’ best, long-term investment you can make in a child’s future is education.

Until, I started reading up for this post about nutrition and found out that food is the need of the hour and that it comes way before education.

Alternatives to isoniazid for treating Latent TB Infection (LTBI): Waking up to treat dormant TB

                                                                              Image courtesy: WHO/H.M. Dias.

Post by Tamilarasu Kadhiravan.

Kadhir is an academic physician based at the Jawaharlal Institute of Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) at Puducherry, in South India; interested in tropical infectious diseases research, particularly tuberculosis. Here, he blogs about the Cochrane review he recently co-authored: Rifamycins (rifampicin, rifabutin and rifapentine) compared to isoniazid for preventing tuberculosis in HIV-negative people at risk of active TB.

National license for access to The Cochrane Library in India renewed for another three years (2013 to 2016)

Cross-posted from 'Evidence-Informed Musings', blog of SASIANCC Director, Dr. Prathap Tharyan.

The national provision for country-wide access to The Cochrane Library in India has just been renewed for a further three years. This will provide millions of people in India continued free access to the best available evidence on the effects of healthcare interventions. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) released the first installment of funding for a three-year national license on April 30th, and the period of the license will begin from when the previous subscription ended in December 2012. 

People in India continued to enjoy one-click free access from January to April 2013 due to the largesse of the publishers, who ensured continuity in the availability of this valuable resource, since the ICMR had indicated willingness to continue this subscription. People in India have now had uninterrupted access to the full contents of The Cochrane Library since 2007, except for a brief period in 2010, when access was halted for nearly a month due to delays in renewal of the national license. Usage took a full six-month period to build up to what it was before free access was stopped. Fortunately, freedom to access reliable evidence to inform health decisions did not stop at midnight on March 31, 2013, as I had earlier feared would happen. 

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