(In the weekly Health Matters newsletter, Ramya Kannan writes about getting to good health, and staying there. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox.)
It’s the third budget of the BJP government at the Centre and there were a lot of expectations from the healthcare sector, particularly after the interim budget raised hopes elevating the budgetary allocation for health. With over Rs. 90,000 crore allocated in the interim budget for 2024 - 2025 higher than the allocation of around Rs. 80,000 crore in 2023-2024, naturally, the healthcare industry sat up for Tuesday’s presentation but went home with very little.
However, what was announced will come as a huge relief to several people suffering from cancer - Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an exemption for three more cancer treatment drugs from customs duty. There were also modifications made to the basic customs duty on Xray tubes and flat panel detectors used in X ray machines.
It is a bit of a downer, as greater spending on health care, particularly public health has been a demand of experts in the industry and academics who point to the COVID epidemic as an urgent incentive to improve public health care infrastructure. While in terms of numbers, the allocation for health has gone up over the years, the overall proportion of health care spending as a portion of the total budget is still disappointingly under 1 %. Strengthening health systems, improving skill development for professionals in the sector and creation of job opportunities have all be envisaged with increased spending on health care, but will now have to wait, afterall.
Just as governments hustled to ensure that they had therapeutic and preventive measures in place as they battled dengue and nipah virus cases, yet another virus, another name grabbed the highlights this week: Chandipura virus. The virus is a member of the Vesiculovirus genus of the family Rhabdoviridae and is spread by the female sandfly during the initial monsoon season. The Chandipura virus was first isolated in 1965, from the blood of two adults in Chandipura village in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The virus was isolated in 1980, in Madhya Pradesh from a patient with acute encephalitis. The symptoms include rapid onset of fever, followed by vomiting, a change in mental status or consciousness, convulsions, diarrhoea, an inability to speak, loss of balance, vision changes, headaches, neck stiffness, photophobia, and seizures. For more on this, read our explainer here: What is the Chandipura virus?
This time, it was first isolated in Gujarat and picked up profile after the death of one person. Mahesh Langa reports that the Chandipura virus spreads in Gujarat, two more children succumb, he also reported that the disease was prevalent in at least a dozen districts in the State and that the toll had risen to 15, just in Gujarat. Meanwhile, the infection also spread to the neighbouring districts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, with the combined deaths going up to 28. The Centre reviewed the Chandipura virus situation, and will send a team to Gujarat.
It is interesting at this juncture to get some context on the whole infectious diseases paradigm in the country. R. Prasad gives an overall perspective on the prevalence of both NCDs and infectious diseases since 1995. Read here: Prevalence of NCDs tripled, infectious diseases doubled since 1995. A recent study that examined self reported morbidities, based on the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data over the years, showed that across India, non-communicable diseases gained a prominent share in morbidity trends from 1995 to 2018, with Kerala reporting the highest rates followed by Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal and Punjab. It has increased more than three times from 8.6 per thousand population in 1995. In the case of infectious and communicable diseases, the prevalence has almost doubled from 8 to 15 per thousand population in the past two decades. Staying on the subject of NCDs, do read the conclusions of this study which argues that genetic factors, regional disparities in comorbidities significantly impact stroke risk.
COVID has made a comeback into newspaper columns, across the world, but certainly in India, where the publication of a study on excessive deaths mapped during the pandemic raised the hackles of the government. Bindu Shajan Perappadan records this academic disagreement: Centre rejects study claiming 11.9 lakh excess deaths in India during 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. An excess mortality of about 11.9 lakh deaths was reported in the Science Advances paper in 2020 over the previous year. This was 17 per cent higher compared to the deaths in 2019. Their estimate was about eight times higher than the official COVID-19 deaths in India, and 1.5 times the World Health Organisation’s estimates. The Health Ministry, in a statement however, said there were ‘critical flaws’ in the methodology of the study, primarily faulting the extrapolation of numbers from a small subset culled out of the National Family Health Survey numbers.
There were also other stories on COVID this past week: Do read from the links below. COVID-19 found to accelerate symptoms of type 1 diabetes in children with early stages of the condition
Ziyad Al-Aly in an article reproduced from The Conversation says Long COVID puzzle pieces are falling into place and the picture is unsettling
Over half of PM CARES for Children scheme applications for COVID orphans rejected
We record the health impacts of climate change over three articles this week. Pradeep Kumar Choudhury and Steny Rapheal write about the toll that extreme heat takes on women. We have said this before many times, but it bears repetition: Women are disproportionately harmed by extreme heat, largely because of unequal power dynamics, gender norms, and unequal access to resources. This is largely because of unequal power dynamics, gender norms, and unequal access to resources. Perhaps, the authors say, we should be alarmed by the numbers — India is home to more than one-in-six women in the world — and extreme heat is now their reality.
In a related piece, focussing on children, Surabhi Malhotra and Shubra Jha argue that heat waves are evaporating the right to play. With extreme weather events and rising temperatures, climate change is limiting the time children get to engage with their peers and the world around them through play.
Here, I write that it is high time Indian lawmakers made climate change a part of their policy, and seeking climate change impact even as they commission environmental impact assessment before giving the nod to large projects would be the way ahead. A Tamil Nadu based NGO Poovulagin Nanbargal’s petition in the High Court of Madras is likely to be an index case, considering the climate emergency is upon us. Read more here: Time to make climate change part of environmental impact reports.
Doing the right journalistic thing and following up on an issue that continues to be relevant, here is Krishnadas Rajagopal reporting from the Supreme Court on the latest in the NEET controversy: Cancellation of NEET-UG 2024 in its entirety is an ‘extreme last resort’. This was after the National Testing Agency announces centre and city-wise results of NEET-UG and hosted it online, based on an order from the court. Maitri Porecha also reported that the Supreme Court was to hear petition for retest for top 3.5 lakh scorers.
We bid a tearful farewell to the doyen, Dr. M.S. Valiathan,who left behind a legacy of medical innovation.
In our tail piece for the week, Krishna Ravi Srinivas wonders about our rights in an increasingly digitised world. As thoughts become digitised, who will protect our neurorights? he asks. Neurotechnologies range from the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that health workers routinely use to the rarer brain-computer interfaces (BCI). In the last few decades, the type of sensory information these technologies have become able to record has expanded considerably. While these raise great opportunities, there are concerns as well. After users’ devices collect the data, there will be an option to transmit them to healthcare providers and private companies, who will have an incentive to integrate them in a larger knowledge framework to offer, say, real-time tracking of health indicators and personalised suggestions. Hit the link to read more.
We also feel the need to add one more element to the tail piece this week, as this piece by Sridhar Sivasubbu and Vinod Scaria, tells us about where the search for the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is at. Researchers have said that LUCA could have formed just 300 million years after the earth formed. That is still a lot of mind boggling years away, but good to know we can dip back that far in order to understand the puzzle of life.
Since we take our explainers very seriously, do spend a few moments on the subjects that interest you here:
Vasudevan Mukunth writes on 100 years of electroencephalography (EEG) in human medicine
C. Aravinda discusses the progress of tobacco from Vasco da Gama’s ship to a ‘pandemic’ that kills 8 million globally
How are blood groups differentiated?
Also read, if you have a few moments:
S. Vijay Kumar reports: Indian Railways grants 42-day special casual leave for organ donors
Chris Wilson, Tim Barraclough and Reuben Nowell, via The Conversation explain that Tiny animals use stolen genes to fight infections – and could fight antibiotic resistance too
Snakes on a plate: pythons touted as protein alternative
Say cheese: Japanese scientists make robot face ‘smile’ with living skin
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Published - July 23, 2024 04:07 pm IST
