India

India to be No 1 for growth in wellness tourism by 2019: Study

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India could be number one for growth globally in the wellness tourism sector in the next five years, clocking over 20 per cent gains annually through 2017, according to a recent study.

Wellness tourism is a $439 billion industry worldwide within the $3.2 trillion global tourism industry, representing 14 per cent of all tourism spending, it said. The study conducted by SRI international projected India to be number one globally for growth in wellness tourism over the next five years, clocking over 20 per cent gain annually through 2017.

Wellness tourism is travel for the purpose of promoting health and well-being through physical, psychological, or spiritual activities. The study predicted that India’s total wellness market to surpass $18 billion in the next four years. Luxury Wellness Tourism segment is estimated to grow nearly 50 per cent faster than global tourism by 2017, it was reported on the sidelines of a three-day exhibition ‘Royal India Wellness 2014’ which concluded on Friday.

SRI International is a US-based nonprofit, independent research and innovation centre serving government and industry. “India has wealth of knowledge and medical systems to treat people and maintain their health through natural means and therapies,” said Paras Shahdadpuri, President of Indian Business and Professionals Council.

“India must come forward and give its gift of naturopathy to the mankind. It has a hidden treasure which should be discovered,” he said at the exhibition. “Unfortunately, we got used to quick fix through allopathy which treats only the manifestations rather than the cause,” he said.

The exhibition on Indian wellness brands with their packages on rejuvenation, holistic healing and prevention and reversal of lifestyle diseases was organised to reach out to the health conscious people.

Source; IBN

Indian-origin scientist makes leadless pacemaker

VIVEK REDDYThe world’s first leadless pacemaker, developed by an Indian-origin scientist Vivek Reddy, has shown promising results after one year of human trials on 32 patients who received the pacemaker.

“This is the first time we have seen one-year follow-up data for this innovative, wireless cardiac pacing technology. Our results show the leadless pacemaker is comparable to traditional pacemakers,” said Reddy, director of arrhythmia services at the Mount Sinai Hospital here.

The findings further support the promising performance and safety of this minimally-invasive, non-surgical pacing device.

The follow-up study evaluated 32 patients with a slowed heartbeat (bradycardia) who successfully received St. Jude Medical’s “Nanostim” leadless pacemaker at two hospitals in Prague and one in Amsterdam.

“There was no experience of infections or failure to sense, pace or communicate with the pacemaker,” Reddy noted.

The leadless cardiac pacemaker is placed directly inside a patient’s heart without surgery during a catheter-guided procedure through the groin via the femoral vein.

The device, resembling a tiny, silver tube and smaller than a triple-A battery, is only a few centimetres in length, making it less than 10 percent the size of a traditional pacemaker.

It works by closely monitoring the heart’s electrical rhythms and if the heart beat is too slow it provides electrical stimulation therapy to regulate it.

“More long-term follow-up of these ‘leadless’ study patients will further our understanding of the potential advantages, benefits, and complication risks of leadless pacemaker technology, along with additional ongoing, larger trials,” Reddy said.

leadless-pacemaker

More than four million patients globally have a pacemaker, and 700,000 new patients receive one each year.

Reddy presented the one-year ‘leadless’ study data findings at ‘Heart Rhythm 2014,’ the Heart Rhythm Society’s 35th annual scientific sessions in San Francisco city in the US May 9.

Source: Times of India

Indian employers rank stress No 1 lifestyle risk factor: Survey

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Indian employers are ahead of their Asia Pacific counterparts in developing strategies to manage work-related stress as one in every three employers instituted stress management programmes last year and an almost equal number plan to do so this year, says a survey.

According to the inaugural Asia Pacific edition of the ‘Staying@Work’ survey conducted by professional services company Towers Watson, stress is the number one lifestyle risk factor, ranking above physical inactivity and obesity.

A growing recognition among employers is that the workplace experience can both contribute to and reduce employee stress and an increasing number of employers are planning lifestyle change programmes that were not as prevalent as of now.

“Almost 1 in every 3 Indian employers has instituted stress or resilience management programmes in 2013 and an almost equal number plan to follow suit in 2014. With stress being ranked as #1 lifestyle risk factor in India, this number is likely to grow,” the report said.

“It is noteworthy that Indian employers fared better than their Asia Pacific counterparts in managing employees’ work -related stress,” Towers Watson India Director, Benefits Anuradha Sriram said.

Integrating various initiatives into a comprehensive and robust health and productivity strategy is a gradual process, but the fact that Indian companies have begun taking positive strides in this direction augurs well, Sriram added.

According to Indian employees the top three reasons for stress at workplace include unclear or conflicting job expectations, inadequate staffing (lack of support, uneven workload in group) and lack of work/life balance.

One of the most common solution adopted by employers to manage employees’ stress is offering flexible working hours as 50 per cent of employers resort to this solution.

Other top solutions adopted by employers include organise stress management interventions like workshops, yoga, tai chi and undertake education and awareness campaigns to help their employees manage stress.

Though Indian employers are ahead of their regional peers in managing stress at workplace, only 38 per cent have identified stress management at workplace as a top priority of their health and productivity programs, signaling a vast scope for improvement in this area.

“In a challenging economic scenario, where companies are stretched to balance costs and maximise productivity, employers need to identify specific triggers that impact employee wellness, engagement and in turn productivity,” Sriram said.

Source: Hindustan Times

Autism Awareness Day: Dearth of doctors to treat the disease

India faces a dearth of doctors and experts to treat autism, the incidence of which is slowly rising, with the illness being considered wrongly by many as mental retardation, experts said.

Moreover, awareness about the neuro-biological disorder is still very low despite the fact that there are more than four million people with autism in the country. Though, there is no official figure, experts said, the figure is growing.

And with just a few to treat this ailment, diagnosis often gets delayed, they added “It may not be wrong to say that there are only a handful of doctors in our country who can provide the right treatment for autism.

“Now with the cases of autism on the rise the need for experts is being acutely felt,” Arun Mukherjee, director of Udaan – a centre for the disabled, told IANS. He said though the situation is improving in metropolitan cities, the situation is still grim. “A lot needs to be done in smaller towns,” Mukherjee added.

Autism affects the functioning of the brain, making it difficult for people afflicted with the disorder to process the information received from various sensory organs. The Indian government only recognised the disorder in 2001.

Autistic individuals exhibit behaviours like spinning, flapping of hands, talking to themselves, constant jumping, attention deficit and hyperactivity. “There is lagging awareness about autism among Indians,” said Usha Verma, principal of Tamana Autism Centre and School of Hope.

“For most of them, it is still a mental illness and that perception has to change. Due to this lack of awareness, parents do not consider it to be important enough for diagnosis,” Verma informed.

Tamana is a special school established in 2003 that caters to autistic children. Samir Parikh, director, mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Hospital, said: “The treatment for autism is a multi-disciplinary approach. There is a wide spectrum and children fall in various ranges. So the treatment varies depending on the level of sickness.”

Being a disorder affecting the brain, autism severely affects speech, language, communication and social interaction. Hence there are two major therapies for autistic individuals — speech and occupational therapy.

“A person who has autism often has trouble communicating and interacting with other people; his or her interests, activities, and play skills may be limited. While occupational therapy helps develop these skills, speech therapy can help address a wide range of communication problems,” Parikh informed.

Though, there are treatments for the disorder, for Indian parents getting an accurate diagnosis also pose a hurdle.

Surabhi Verma, director, Sparsh for Children said: “It is only speech delay because of which parents visit paediatricians, where most of the time they assume that the kids are just slow.

“Diagnosing autism becomes a long drawn process and such delays tend to affect treatment process,” Verma infromed. Sparsh trains autistic children and even those with other disability to help them become part of mainstream schools. Experts said that if right therapy for autism is made available early, a child can develop skills better.

“A two-year old child will be able to learn faster. While after three years the learning process takes longer and extra attention as well,” said Verma.

Experts said that the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, does not include autism, but the government plans to cover the condition in the revised act, which has lapsed in parliament.

Autism is now covered under the National Trust for the Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act, 1999.

“Just adding autism to the Disability Bill is not enough. Government needs to devise new curriculum and start specialisation courses so that the country gets more experts to treat autism,” added Mukherjee.

Source: Zee news

Vitamin D deficiency risk to 84 % Indians: report

Changing lifestyle, increasingly odd-working hours and limited outdoor activities are leaving a bad impact on human health as 84 per cent of the country’s population was found vitamin D deficient, a recent study said here on Monday.

“In the face of present-day lifestyles, dominated by ungodly working hours and limited outdoor activities, inherent vitamin D deficiency is increasingly becoming an eyesore among a large number of people. (There is) Vitamin D deficiency risk to 84 per cent of Indians,” SRL Diagnostics said in its report.

The human body’s ideal dose of vitamin D ranges between 1,000 and 2,000 IU (International Units) per day.

“Vitamin D deficiency was found to be prevalent in around 69 per cent of the population, while 15 per cent more were found to be vitamin D insufficient, thus making around 84 per cent of Indians risk-prone to this, the study said.

The report pointed out that skin exposure to the sun is natural, intended, and most effective source of vitamin D, yet the most neglected. Tests that estimate the level of vitamin D have become increasingly common, pan-Indian.

Testing for vitamin D deficiency has been known to protect a majority of the Indian population from joint pains, muscle weakness, cardiovascular disorders and other more serious problems that could be permanently detrimental to one’s health.

While research on the impact of vitamin D on ailments is ongoing, doctors believe it is clearly associated with diabetes, high blood pressure, bone weakness, nerve-related disorders and obesity.

Doctors also point out that vitamin D directly benefits patients with diabetes and cardiovascular ailments. A sizable body of evidence proves the link between vitamin D and people with diabetes and heart ailments.

After pregnancy, women are at a higher risk of developing osteoporosis due to high demands of calcium and vitamin D, it added.

There are diagnostic tests to determine vitamin D levels in the body. It is extremely essential to keep a check on the levels of deficiency in the body as it helps retain calcium,” SRL Diagnostics President-Research & Innovation, Dr B R Das said.

“Sufficient vitamin D levels assist the body in reducing bad cholesterol and increasing good cholesterol, besides helping in the essential repair and maintenance activities in the body. It is directly linked to knee pains and osteoporosis,” Das said.

The study reveals that the differences between deficiency and insufficiency are conspicuous. Vitamin D deficiency manifests itself as a bone disease, which is mostly either rickets or osteomalacia. Whereas insufficiency may be associated with milder disease outcomes, including muscle weakness and fatigue.

Another outcome of this study draws attention to males between the ages of 30 and 60, while adolescent girls and women of child-bearing age (those belonging to the 16-30 age group) are more likely to develop vitamin D deficiency, as they require vitamin D in the form of extra supplements for growth, it said.

Source: Deccan chronicle

India still home to quarter of global TB cases

Despite having a strong public sector programme to contain the disease, tuberculosis still remains a cause of concern for India, which has nearly a quarter of the global burden of TB, health experts said.

Experts said measures which can help strengthen the fight against the disease include involvement of the private sector, more political commitment to create awareness and containing risk factors like malnutrition.

“TB is still a cause for concern. It is the sheer numbers in India and the associated problems like poverty which are responsible for this,” Soumya Swaminathan, director, National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, an organization under the health ministry, told IANS.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 2.2 million tuberculosis patients in India, which makes it the world’s highest TB-burden country. TB killed 1.3 million people worldwide in 2012 and India alone accounted for 26 percent of the total cases.

She said that China and Brazil have done better in controlling TB in their respective countries and India needs to do more.

“In eight years, India has made tremendous progress as far as containing TB. But it needs to do much more,” she added.

But R. S. Gupta, deputy director general (TB) in the health and family welfare ministry, said: “Treatment success rates have been above 85 percent for several years in the country.”

Gupta told IANS that the overall quality of TB services, including human resources and systems for financial management are being strengthened.

To achieve the National Tuberculosis Programme’s (NTP) ambitious goal of universal health care access for all people with TB by 2017, financial commitments must be maintained by all partners, including international agencies, he said.

The state-run tuberculosis control initiative of the government, NTP provides free of cost, quality anti-tubercular drugs across the country. More than 1.5 million people avail the facility at 13,000 centres.

Gupta said that the private sector should be involved more as most patients are being treated in private clinics.

Agreed Swaminathan, who said that the government needs to work in tandem with the private sector.

“Standard procedures need to be followed for notification of the disease and diagnosis, especially by private practioners,” Swaminathan told IANS.

In 2012, India declared TB to be a notifiable disease. It means that with immediate effect all private doctors, caregivers and clinics treating a TB patient had to report every case to the government.

According to a recent WHO report, India has achieved the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) target for TB which says that the incidence of the disease should be falling. It is on track to reach the 2015 targets for reductions in TB prevalence and mortality.

But it added that India accounts for 31 percent of the estimated 2.9 million missed TB cases — people who were either not diagnosed or diagnosed but not reported to NTP.

It is estimated that about 40 percent of the Indian population is infected with TB bacteria, the vast majority of whom have latent rather than active TB.

Listing the other steps needed, Swaminathan said: “Getting more political commitment and activism from civil society to create awareness about TB like it was done in the case of HIV/AIDS would be a great help.”

India also needs to contain the risk factors associated with the disease. The biggest among them is malnutrition, which makes people more susceptible to the development of active TB. Tuberculosis patients have lower Body Mass Index (BMI), muscle mass and subcutaneous stores of fat.

“Malnutrition is the biggest risk factor and it has been overlooked,” she said, adding that the “disease needs to be fought on a common platform by all stakeholders.”

Source: Zee News

 

Parents save premature baby’s life by keeping him in icebox

On the advice of a doctor, a premature baby boy’s life was saved after his parents incubated him inside a polystyrene icebox for five months

In October 2013, Mithilesh Chauhan was born two months premature at Alliance Hospital in Mumbai, India. At birth, he weighed just 3 pounds 3 ounces and was in need of constant monitoring as he was prone to infections.

However, Mithilesh’s parents, Aruna and Ramseh Chauhan, could not afford to keep their son in the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). They initially paid for their son’s hospital stay by borrowing money from relatives, but they soon ran out of people to ask for help. The new parents then tried reaching out to other government-run hospitals, but all the ICU waiting lists were too long.

Knowing the baby would have to be discharged soon, doctors at Alliance Hospital suggested a cheap – and unconventional – alternative.

“One doctor told us that if we couldn’t afford to keep our baby in hospital we should try a Thermocol icebox with holes for ventilation and a 60-watt bulb to provide the right amount of warmth,” Aruna Chauhan, 34, told Cover Asia Press. “He advised it was better than nothing and might save our baby. My husband bought the box from a nearby fish market and cut holes in it.”

After 20 days in the ICU, Mithilesh was released from the hospital – leaving the icebox as the Chauhan’s only option. Aruna and Ramseh said they would take him out every two hours to take his temperature.

“It was awful,” Aruna told Cover Asia Press. “We had no idea if it was the right thing to do, but we had to try something. We were terrified if we did nothing he’d die, but we were also aware that what we were doing wasn’t exactly safe either. It was a very distressing time.”

Mithilesh survived after spending five months in the icebox – but he remained severely underweight. He is now receiving 24-hour medical care at the Wadia Hospital for Children, who heard about his condition and offered to treat him for free.

Source: Fox news

SGPGI doctors implant pacemaker in 105-year-old patient

Dr Naveen Garg, professor, department of cardiology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), Lucknow claims to have successfully implanted a pacemaker in a 105-year old man.

According to Dr Garg, the patient had complete heart block, which led to multiple complications including lung infection and renal insufficiency. Besides, he weighed just 30 kilos at the time of surgery, which involved implantation of a cardiac pacemaker.

Dr Garg said the man could be the oldest patient in India and third oldest patient in the world to get cardiac pacemaker. Oldest age at the time of pacemaker implantation in the world is 107 years, according to the Guinness World Records.

Giving more details, Dr Garg informed that the patient was brought to SGPGIMS in the first week of March in an extremely frail condition.

The primary problem the patient suffered from was repeated Stokes Adam episodes and hypoxic encephalopathy. His heart rate was just 36 beats per minutes with intermittent long pauses. Along with this, he had developed lung infections and renal insufficiency, according to Dr Garg.

Dr Garg further said the biggest problem was that the patient was severely underweight. He did not have sufficient space below the collarbone to implant the pacemaker, the usual site for implantation.

As a solution to the problem, Dr Garg changed the approach and implanted the VVI pacemaker in the armpit. The procedure was less invasive and helped in providing relief to the patient by helping the heart work normally, according to Dr Garg.

The doctors claimed the patient was stable and noted that the family had a history of living longer. “The patient is being nursed by 100-year-old brother and a 70-year-old son,” said Dr Garg.

According to Dr Garg, the surgery was performed on March 7 and the patient was discharged on March 11.

Source: India Medical Times

Unease grows among U.S. doctors over Indian drug quality

Some U.S. doctors are becoming concerned about the quality of generic drugs supplied by Indian manufacturers following a flurry of recalls and import bans by the Food and Drug Administration.

India supplies about 40 percent of generic and over-the-counter drugs used in the United States, making it the second-biggest supplier after Canada.

In recent months, the FDA, citing quality control problems ranging from data manipulation to sanitation, has banned the importation of products from Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, Wockhardt Ltd and, most recently, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

“I’m just beginning to realize the gravity of the problem,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s terrible and it is starting to get a lot of traction among physicians.”

Indian drugmakers are by no means the only companies to recall products or be warned by the FDA about manufacturing problems. For instance, quality control failures at Johnson & Johnson forced the company to recall dozens of products over the past five years, ranging from artificial hips to children’s Tylenol.

And last year, Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim said it would shut down its U.S. contract manufacturing unit, Ben Venue Laboratories, after it was cited for repeated manufacturing violations that led to shortages of the cancer drug Doxil.

India’s drugmakers, a $14 billion industry, reject any criticism that their products are inferior to drugs made in other countries.

“We have heard doctors making generalized statements, without being specific on any product or company,” said D.G. Shah, Secretary General of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, a trade group representing large Indian drugmakers. “This is a deliberate and serious campaign to malign the Indian generic industry.”

If U.S. doctors come across a medicine that does not meet quality standards, they should report it to regulators, he said. “Doctors are not in a position to judge whether manufacturing processes are correct or not. That is the U.S. FDA’s job.”

Generic drugs account for nearly 85 percent of medicines prescribed in the United States and the government is relying on them to help rein in healthcare costs.

“We are losing control over what people are swallowing,” said Dr. Harry Lever, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who is trying raise awareness of the matter among U.S. lawmakers. “Now, when a patient comes in who is not doing well, the first thing I do is look at their drugs and find out who makes it.”

Increasingly, Lever said, he is recommending patients seek out generic drugs from specific manufacturers outside India.

“I’m tending to stay away from India,” he said. “There’s something wrong. Too many things are happening.”

INDIA DOCTORS HIT BACK

Indian physicians do not share the concerns.

“Our drugs are being sold in many countries and being accepted, so we have no issues,” said Narendra Saini, Secretary General of the Indian Medical Association, a voluntary body of 215,000 doctors. “How do I know that Western drugs are better than our drugs?”

A 2012 report by India’s parliament alleged collusion between pharmaceutical firms and officials at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), the country’s drugs regulator, and described an agency that was both understaffed and underqualified.

Saini said physicians trust that the CDSCO is taking care of the quality and the standard of the drugs made in India.

“We very much trust those medicines,” he added.

Representatives of Ranbaxy, Sun and Wockhardt were not immediately available to comment.

Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, said he is concerned about the quality of generic drugs in general, not just those from India. He cited, as an example, his experience with the diabetes drug metformin.

“When patients open the bottle of medication it smells like dead fish,” he said. Zonszein did not know which company made the foul-smelling drug.

Physicians do not have a say in which generic drug a patient receives, as that depends on which products are stocked by individual pharmacies. If a patient wants to avoid a certain manufacturer, he or she may have to change pharmacies.

Doctors may specify that the branded version of a drug be dispensed, but insurance companies frequently refuse to pay for them.

Dr. Richard Kovacs, who heads a number of American College of Cardiology committees and sits on its board of trustees, said doctors may need to play a greater role monitoring the medications prescribed by their practices.

“The average U.S. cardiologist has been able to assume that the drugs were safe and effective. It now appears we need to be more vigilant as a profession, and assist the FDA by reporting cases where we are concerned about irregularities in the drugs supplied to our patients,” he said.

Source: Reuters

2-headed baby born in India

The mother reportedly had no idea she was carrying twins because she could not afford an ultrasound. Doctors say they don’t believe the baby girls, who have two heads but one set of vital organs, will survive.

A woman gave birth to what seemed to be a girl with two heads in northern India on Wednesday. Urmila Sharma, 28, was too poor to afford an ultrasound and had no idea she was carrying conjoined twins, reports said.

“She is presently alive and healthy,” Dr. Ashish Sehgal said of the twins, although doctors do not expect them to survive. The twins each have a head but share one body and all their vital organs, so separation is not possible.

A very “meticulous and challenging” surgery could save the babies’ lives, but doctors cannot operate until the girls are stable, Sehgal — who’s also the CEO of the Cygnus J.K. Hindu Hospital in Sonipat, Haryana. The twins are currently in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Sehgal said keeping them alive was “a real tough challenge,” but said he is “hoping for success with crossed fingers.”

Doctors said it was too late do anything by the time Sharma delivered the twins via Caesarean section. They were born weighing 7 pounds, 7 ounces and have not been named.
The twins have two necks and two spines.

British papers report the mother’s family is “very distressed.”
Some conjoined twins can be separated — depending on shared organs and where they’re connected — but most are stillborn or die shortly after birth.

Source: daily news