Ten thousand. This five-numerical figure has fascinated people for a long time. As an example, Sunil Gavaskarโs 10,000th run. I can vividly recall Gavaskar nudging a quick single through the slips to become the first cricketer to reach 10,000 test runs. I had watched that moment on TVโthe fourth test match against Pakistan at Ahmedabad …
Hydroxychloroquine and Covid
My colleagues and I wrote our concern in Lancet Infect Dis about the inappropriate and irrational use of Hydroxychloroquine for preventing and treating Covid in India. We wrote this when the pandemic had just started. The Indian Council of Medical Research, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has recommended chemoprophylaxis with hydroxychloroquine for …
Poetry and Medicine
Poetry and medicine. For centuries they have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Ancient mythology tells us that Apollo was the Greek God of medicine, music and poetry. John Keats abandoned a career in medicine to concentrate on writing. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote poems throughout his medical career and continued to do so long after he …
Covid and Community Transmission
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.