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 …
Covid and Ayurveda
I criticised Patanjali Ayurvedaโs claimed cure for COVID-19 for making unsubstantiated claims of efficacy. The drugs it is offering are untested and unproven. They haven’t proven their mettle in a well-conducted adequately sized randomized controlled trial. The proponents of Ayurveda, however, ask – can Ayurveda, or alternative medicine in general, be evaluated in the same …
Medical Conferences sans Drug Industry Sponsorship
Medical conferences are fast degenerating into melas that educate, entertain, amuse and irritate and deceiveโnot necessarily in that order. One can smell, see and feel the drug industry everywhere, advertising on the walls, shaping the contents and style of educational programmes, tempting with gifts and free meals, travel and other amenities. In 2003, MGIMS became …
Ethical Challenges of Research in a Pandemic
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 …
Covid 19: We need well-designed clinical trials
On June 23, Patanjali Ayurved claimed that its preparations, โCoronilโ 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 …
The many questions about Favipiravir
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has approved Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, an Indian pharmaceutical company, to sell generic versions of Favipiravir for the treatment of COVID-19. This drug, originally invented by a Japanese company, was meant to treat influenza. After the outbreak of COVID-19, doctors in China and Russia started using it to treat COVID-19 …
Favipiravir and Covid
Dr Priya Mendiratta wrote a post on my poem on Favipiravir and Covid. Thank you Dr SP Kalantri for still guiding us to always practice ethically, not abandon logical thinking and scientific approach . Dr Kalantriโs thoughts on Favipiravir, a new oral drug launched in India yesterday by Glenmark to fight Covid19 infection. He is …
Clinical Research during Covid Era
On 18 June 2020, Dr. C. S. Pramesh, the Director of the Tata Memorial Hospital texted me a message and then called me asking if I would be willing to do a talk on Covid and research during Pandemic. A day after. Although I had little time to prepare, I didnโt blink an eyelid to …