Living

A radical proposal to legalise proxy motherhood in India sparks a debate on its medical and ethical repercussions.

Although the actual villain is the still-imperfectly known Infectious Hepatitis virus Type A, the hepatitis problem does stem from the completely preventable human carelessness, that encourages the virus along its sinister way.

Ayurveda, after a semi-eclipse for centuries, is right back in fashion. But the industry cannot keep pace with its growing popularity and both expertise and medicine are below standard.

The days of the Nehru jacket and Madras cottons might well be over, but the Indian look has invaded the Western market again. 

Like their counterparts in China the barefoot doctors of the Social Work and Research Centre at Tilonia, a village in Rajasthan, a night's run by train from Delhi, do not really go unshod.

The contribution of Ayurveda has provided relief for suffering Indians for the past 3,000 years and still ministers to the health needs of the overwhelming majority of Indians beyond the reach of modern medicine.

The Health Minister, Dr Karan Singh, hopefully looks forward to every eligible couple in the country being motivated to accept family planning sooner or later.

As the sun rose on 1976, with 99 deaths chalked up for the previous year, it looked as if the mosquito was well set to retain its lead over efforts to curb malaria resurgence.

For twenty year-old Pablo Bartholonew, a freelance photographer from Delhi, the announcement that his photo-feature on morphine addicts had won the prestigious Golden Eye Award organized by the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam, came as much of a surprise to him, as indeed to everyone who knows him.

This is the backdrop - of some 120 million little Indians - against which the XV International Congress of Pediatrics was held in Delhi last month. It was a triennial assembly full of luminaries who have devoted their lives to improving the health of children.

India has eradicated smallpox. After an assiduous search of the country for any case of the disease for two full years, the World Health Organizations's International Smallpox Assessment Commission declared in New Delhi on April 23 that India is free from the age-old scourge.

Encephalitis, the deadly virus disease now raging in large parts of North and East India, has claimed over 1,300 lives so far.

From the end of July to September, Nair Hospital had three deaths and 12 cases of gas gangrene (official figures). While hospital authorities insist that "gas gangrene is not a new thing to the city" and "Nair is not the only hospital to have cases", its own admission of 12 cases in the last two months is astounding when compared to a total of five cases in the last five years.

Contrary to general belief, the methods adopted by a team of three doctors are significantly different from those employed by Britain's Steptoe Edwards team responsible for the first test-tube baby. According to the chief architect of the Indian experiment, Dr Subash Mukherjee, their method is unique in that baby Durga is the world's first frozen embryo baby.

On September 30, Madhavrao Mule, former general secretary of RSS succumbed to a severe attack of jaundice in a Pune hospital. During the last ten months at least one member of every Bombay household has contracted jaundice and many others have had mild attacks without realizing it.