Indian Council of Medical Research Archives - InnoHEALTH magazine

India aims to eliminate TB by 2025

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 10:37:01 +0000

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Dr. Soumya Swaminanthan needs no introduction. The 58-year-old pediatrician and clinical scientist has been recently nominated as Deputy Director General of the World Health Organisation. Ms. Swaminanthan, the pioneer in Tuberculosis research, advocates the role of research to root out the disease as the country has the highest number of cases in the world.

India’s National Health Policy recognizes the key role that research plays in the development of a nation’s health. The India TB Research Consortium brings together diverse stakeholders to develop new tools – diagnostics, vaccines and drugs – to enable the country to take a leadership role in fast tracking translational TB research and find solutions for the world.

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan (Secretary, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and Director General, ICMR) recently at the second International Scientific Advisory Group (ISAG) meeting, states India has the highest number of TB cases in the world. It is widely recognised that the field needs new tools to make a greater impact on this disease, including more sensitive diagnosis, preventive vaccines and new drugs to treat MDR-TB.

The India Tuberculosis Research Consortium (ITRC), formed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Delhi convened its second International Scientific Advisory Group (ISAG) meeting.

The ISAG comprises global experts in the areas of TB research and has been formed to advise the ITRC on developing and translating, research & development leads across four key thematic areas – diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics and implementation research – taking into account the research leads in each area, available both nationally and internationally.

Dr. Barry R. Bloom (Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University and Chair, ISAG) addressing the meeting states, “TB is now the largest single cause of death in the world from an infectious disease.

Hence, the Government of India has made a significant commitment to support research to prevent and control the disease in India.” India’s National Strategic Plan 2017 for TB elimination aims to achieve and maintain a cure rate of >85% in new sputum positive patients for TB and reduce incidence of new cases, to reach elimination status by the year 2025.

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Alcohol addiction: Counselling can be of great help

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:31:46 +0000

Alcohol abuse contributes to illness and premature deaths in a big way. It is also associated with several socio-economic consequences such loss of earnings and domestic violence.

Over the years, several measures have been launched to overcome the problem including imposition of ban on alcohol sale and setting up of de-addiction centres to help the drinkers.

A group of researchers drawn from several national and international institutions have now found that it is possible to address the issue in a significantly effective manner at low costs. They have found that lot of benefit can be derived by merely equipping public health workers with different counselling techniques.

The study was conducted at 10 public primary healthcare centres in Goa. A total of 377 heavy drinkers in the age group of 18 to 65 years were enrolled. They were randomized into two groups- one receiving just the routine care and the other who also received counselling for two months. Their alcohol use was measured after 12 months.

In the group that received counseling, as much as 68 per cent of the men were found to have reduced their consumption to the safe level, as against 40 per cent in the case of the group that received only the routine care. The counselling programme was also not too intense. It consisted of just one to three sessions.

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The counselors were also just non-specialist health workers. They had no prior professional training or qualification in the field of mental health. However, they were given rigorous training on various aspects of counselling and they gave advice on how to deal with craving and motivated patients to quit drinking.

Speaking to India Science Wire, Vikram Patel, professor at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of the Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts in USA, who was the corresponding author for the study, said, “Given the great social and health harms associated with heavy drinking in India, and the effectiveness of this relatively brief and cheap treatment to reduce drinking levels,the government needs to scale up this treatment by training primary care health workers across the country”.

Besides Dr. Patel, the study team included Abhijit Nadkarni, Helen A Weiss, Benedict Weobong, David McDaid, Daisy R Singla, A-La Park, Bhargav Bhat, Basavaraj Katti, Jim McCambridge, Pratima Murthy, Michael King, G Terence Wilson, Betty Kirkwood, Christopher G Fairburn, and Richard Velleman.

National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru and Sangath, a NGO in Goa participated in the study. They collaborated with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford, University of Bath, University of York, University College London and London School of Economics and Political Science in United Kingdom, University of Toronto in Canada, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Harvard Medical School in United States of America. The Indian Council of Medical Research gave the ethical approval for conducting the trial.

(Article shared from India Science Wire)

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INDIA'S NUTRITION ATLAS GOES LIVE

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 05:23:24 +0000

The Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) has developed the country’s first Nutrition Atlas to provide all the relevant data and information about nutrition.

The Nutrition Atlas provides information and data on nutritional status of population groups at national and state levels, along with an overview of nutrition-related deficiencies, disorders and prevalence levels in various parts of the country along-with information on nutrients, nutrient rich foods, nutritional deficiency disorders and a host of other topics.

The portal also includes information on nutrition rich foods and nutri-guide for various nutrients, minerals, essential amino-acids, fatty acids, dietary fibers and proteins, along with their biochemical cutoffs, recommended dietary allowances, signs and symptoms and dietary sources.

The Atlas is interactive and displays information in the form a user may select and has been developed through a long drawn, cohesive and technical exercise by a multidisciplinary team in the bioinformatics division of NIN. It makes use of publicly available data sources like reports of National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, National Family Health Survey, World Health Organisation and other public databases. The Dashboard acts like an information management tool, helping the user track data on under nutrition, over nutrition, overweight, obesity and communicable and noncommunicable diseases. It can also provide different time trends on each of these parameters. The development conducted the research under ICMR.

ARTICLE SHARED FROM ‘INDIA SCIENCE WIRE’

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