July - September 2010 Vol 7 Issue 3
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Ketan Desai and the Medical Council of India: the road to perdition?
The Medical Council of India is a statutory national agency charged with several responsibilities. Sadly, it is plagued by inefficiency, arbitrariness and lack of transparency. It has been functioning for some years as the fiefdom of one person, Ketan Desai. He has been re-elected president of the council despite strictures against him by the High Court of New Delhi. This essay provides data that may help the reader identify the rot within the Council. Permitted optimism, we may hope that this essay and similar observations by others will prompt a change for the better. At present, such optimism is not justified.”
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The Mental Health Act 1987: Quo Vadimus?
Persons with mental illness have the right to a range of treatment and supportive services in the community. These need to be assured to them by law. While older legislations viewed persons with mental illness either as “being dangerous” or as “objects of charity”, the current UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability views them as “subjects with rights”. This has led to an urgent relook at the Mental Health Act 1987, which has faced criticism ever since its enactment. The recently proposed amendments enlarge the scope of regulation to include diverse mental healthcare facilities and professionals; seek the setting up of a State Mental Health Review Commission; lay down guidelines for “independent” and “supported” admissions; and propose new sections for emergency and other treatments, physical restraint and discharge. The debate regarding these amendments ranges from whether an amendment of the MHA will suffice or whether a new Act is required; whether the amendments are sufficiently broad-based or excessively focused on inpatient treatment; how mental illness is addressed in other Acts; who are key stakeholders, and, most important, whether the mechanisms for service provision have been adequately thought through. The process of initiating the amendments has been questioned by different stakeholders and highlights the need to bring about legislative change through adequate dialogue and collaboration.(...more)
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Public health, preparedness and the World Health Organization response to swine flu in 2009
From March 1918 to June 1920, an influenza pandemic swept the world, spreading among the Inuit tribes in the Arctic and to remote Pacific Islanders, killing over 10 million people in the Indian subcontinent. It is estimated that about one in three people was infected and that between 50 and 100 million people died worldwide. At the start of the epidemic, the medical profession believed that influenza was caused by Pfeiffer’s bacillus, but by the end, they were convinced that this was no bacterial disease, but a form of respiratory infection spread by secretions, spitting, coughs and sneezes. There was no cure and supportive therapies were limited, though quacks abounded and recommended strange potions to prevent disease. Unlike the seasonal flu, this new version, or "Spanish flu”, killed mainly young people, with between 2% and 20% of those infected dying. Bodies were buried without coffins in mass graves because there were not enough coffin makers or grave diggers to cope with the number of deaths. By some estimates, 3-6% of the world’s population died in two years. In today’s world, that would mean wiping out the entire population of North America.
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