I see three challenges ahead vis-ร -vis COVID-19 in Indiaโs rural areas. First, many rural healthcare workers are exhausted and burned out. Second, lifestyle diseases like diabetes, high blood-pressure and heart problems have become more common in rural India in the last decade or so. Third, officials and healthcare workers have to contend with the spectre …
COVID-19 Treatment: Choosing the Right Medicines
The COVID-19 disease is still rapidly evolving and maybe, we were far more cautious earlier than we are today. As we look for treatment, cures and the coronavirus vaccine do we now understand drugs used to treat the novel coronavirus? As patients, do we know enough about these medicines? Are we choosing the right questions …
Ulhas, the writer
Some physicians are known to write creatively, taking up pen alongside their stethoscopes. Ulhas Jajoo belongs to that creed. A Writer-physician or a physician-writer. This week, Ulhas had his four Hindi books published. He writes about the people he admired, and those who shaped his life and times. He also picks up thoughts and narrations …
Covid: Evidence, Ethics and Economics
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 …
Clinical Trials in Covid: Ethics and Practice
Fear. Panic. Desperation. Came Covid and most doctors began to prescribe anti-Covid drugs based not on scientific research, but based on anecdotes, media stories, newspapers, TV channels and promotion of drugs by the drug industry. The virus pushed the Evidence-based medicine to the back seat. Physicians were either reluctant toโ or didnโt know how toโ …
COVID-19: The need for evidence-based medicine
A number of old drugs approved for other diseases are being โrepurposedโ 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 …
Covid : Defining the Research Priorities?
Here is a YouTube link to the PowerPoint presentation.
Covid: Clinical Care and Research
Here is a link to the PowerPoint presentation on YouTube :
Covid: Practical Hospital Level Care and Interventions
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 struggle to keep India’s Covid-19 patients breathing
On May 10, 2020, we admitted the first patient with Covid19 to our hospital. We did speedily ramp up critical care, to provide oxygenatedย hospital beds, ICUs, medicines, and ventilators, gloves, N95 masks, PPEs, and back up supplies.ย Oxygen. Perhaps for the first time we realised how important was Oxygen, the sole therapy for managing COVID-19-induced …