SP Kalantri
SP Kalantri
The ICMR has increasingly drawn criticism from India’s doctors and scientists, who have questioned its drug recommendations & lack of transparency on data related to variants. Countrywide, doctors started writing these prescriptions, which artificially inflated the cost for Covid management,” I said. “Big Pharma was laughing all the way to the bank and ultimately the …
High hospital bills and black marketing of drugs and oxygen make the treatment of Covid-19 prohibitively expensive. Malini Aisola, co-convenor of the All India Drug Action Network, ET’s Kiran Somvanshi and I discuss the flaws in the existing setup and the steps to fix the financial burden of Covid-19.
I designed an evidence-based management protocol for managing patients admitted to our teaching hospital with Covid19. The concept was minimalist: excluding irrational, untested, unproven therapies and focusing only on those which have been shown to work in large randomised trials. Here is a YouTube link to the powerpoint presentation:
This afternoon I spoke on several issues that influence our thought processes when we see patients with Covid19- in the community, in the hospital OPD, wards or ICUs. How should we design our therapy? Should we allow ourselves to prescribe untested and unproven therapies because the atmosphere is filled with fear, desperation and panic? What …
A number of old drugs approved for other diseases are being “repurposed” and tested for their safety and efficacy in COVID-19, in systematic clinical trials. They have emergency approval for use in COVID-19, but most are not yet proven for this use. Some drugs have received approval without adequate testing. Other drugs are being used …
On 13 July 2020, I spoke on how should we organise hospital level care and use evidence based interventions to help our Covid patients. Dr Cliff Lane and Gagandeep Kang also spoke in this session. Here is a YouTube link to my PowerPoint presentation.
The pressure for an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19 is high. There are more than 2,000 studies on COVID-19 across the world; many of these are trials on humans to develop vaccines, and to test the efficacy of drugs for this new disease. The urgency of this pandemic presents new, acute ethical challenges in …
On June 23, Patanjali Ayurved claimed that its preparations, ‘Coronil’ would cure COVID-19 in just a week. Scientists, researchers, physicians and media registered their strong protest and expressed robust disbelief for the outrageous and misleading ads. The company claimed that their medicine was tested in a randomised controlled trial (RCT) among COVID-19 positive patients and …
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been the biggest buzzword across the world lately. Until December 2019, this was a meek drug, used mainly by rheumatologists, internists, and dermatologists for inflammatory diseases. Its cousin Chloroquine has been the most popular drug for malaria. We have known and used these drugs for decades. The antiviral properties of these drugs …