Heena Sharma Blog

The total number of coronavirus cases across the world has now crossed the 8-million mark. Acharya Balkrishna, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Patanjali has claimed that an Ayurvedic medicine developed by the company has been able to cure Covid-19 patients within 5-14 days. Meanwhile, major pharmaceutical companies such as Gilead Sciences, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna are rushing to find a successful vaccine and some of them have succeeded in many ways. 1. Patanjali's Ayurvedic coronavirus treatment "We are not talking about an immunity booster. We are talking about a cure," said Acharya Balkrishna, managing director of Patanjali. According to the firm, an Ayurvedic medicine developed by the company has been able to cure Covid-19 patients within 5-14 days. The clinical trials were conducted in Indore and in Jaipur after Patanjali secured permission last week. Read More

From a continued decline in infant and maternal mortality to inadequate funding for healthcare, from poor nutrition to an acute encephalitis syndrome outbreak, and from success in malaria prevention to below-par performance on leprosy control and tuberculosis elimination, here’s a look at 2019’s biggest health stories. Decrease in maternal mortality, infant mortality Fewer mothers died during childbirth as India’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR)--maternal deaths per 100,000 live births--fell 27% from 167 in 2011-13 to 122 in 2015-17, according to the Sample Registration System bulletin. However, India is still a long way from the Sustainable Development Goal for MMR: a target of 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030. Three Indian states have already achieved this--Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. India’s infant mortality rate--deaths per 1,000 live births--also fell from 42 in 2012 to 33 in 2017, as IndiaSpend reported in June 2019. This rate is higher than the glo...

As mosquitoes mostly spread dengue virus while feeding on iron deficit blood, researchers suggest consuming iron-rich food if dealing with iron deficiency, anaemia or dengue fever. Dengue is most commonly acquired in urban environments, and the expansion of cities in the tropics has been accompanied by an expansion in dengue infections. UConn Health immunologist Penghua Wang wanted to see if blood quality had an impact on the spread of the dengue virus. Blood levels of various substances can vary tremendously from person to person, even among healthy people Wang and colleagues at Tsinghua University and State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control in Beijing, King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang in Bangkok, and the 920 Hospital Joint Logistics Support Force in Kunming ran a series of experiments to explore the idea. They collected fresh blood from healthy human volunteers, then added the dengue virus to each sample. Then they fed the...

Researchers say a London man appears to be free of the AIDS virus after a stem cell transplant. It's the second such success including "Berlin patient" Timothy Ray Brown. Such transplants are dangerous and have failed in other patients. The new findings were published online Monday by the journal Nature. The London patient has not been identified. He was diagnosed with HIV in 2003. He developed cancer and agreed to a stem cell transplant to treat the cancer in 2016. His doctors found a donor with a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to HIV . The transplant changed the London patient's immune system, giving him the donor's HIV resistance. Article Source -> Business Standard

Kala was 11 when she had her first menstrual period . She was at home preparing for her final exams and panicked when she found herself bleeding . “ My first reaction was to panic,” recalled Kala (name changed to protect identity), a college student in southern Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district. “I thought I had contracted some serious illness and I was going to die. What would happen to my exams? Should I ask my father to take me to the doctor?” Kala had called out to her mother in panic. ” My mother did not come,” Kala said. Instead, the old woman who lived next door did. “After bustling about and getting me to bathe, she took me to a room near the cowshed, asked me to sit on a wooden plank, which had already been prepared for me and asked me not to move from there,” she said. Kala was given some food and water and left alone. It was evening before she saw her mother. “ Instead of comforting me and taking me home, my mother told me that I was a big girl now and that I sho...

A scientist in China claims to have produced the world’s first genome-edited babies by altering their DNA to increase their resistance to HIV . Aside from the lack of verifiable evidence for this non peer-reviewed claim, this research is premature, dangerous and irresponsible. He Jiankui from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen (which has reportedly since suspended him) said he edited the DNA of seven embryos being used for fertility treatment, so far resulting in the birth of one set of twin girls. He says he used the tool known as CRISPR to delete the embryos’ CCR5 gene (C-C motif chemokine receptor 5), mutations in which are linked to resistance to HIV infection . If true, this is a significant advance in genetic science, but there are some very serious problems with this news. First, the research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal so we cannot be sure of the exact details of what has been done. Instead, the scientist made ...

While Type-2 diabetes is expected to rise by more than a fifth, from 406 million in 2018 to 511 million in 2030 globally, India along with China and the US will share over half of these high blood sugar cases , say researchers led by one of an Indian-origin, while asserting the need to improve access for the life saving insulin. The study, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal, showed that China (130 million) followed by India (98 million), and the US (32 million) will constitute over half of Type-2 diabetics by 2030. As a result, the amount of insulin needed to effectively treat Type-2 diabetes will rise by more than 20 per cent worldwide over the next 12 years. Compared to current levels of insulin access, if universal global access was achieved (with a treatment target of HbA1c -- measure of blood glucose) seven per cent or lower, the number of people with Type-2 diabetes worldwide using insulin in 2030 would double from around 38 million (7....

Touted as the world's "most human" Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant that can "read between the lines" and "understand emotional expressions", Amelia has the potential to turn India's healthcare sector into an inclusive one, believes her creator Chetan Dube, CEO of New York-headquartered AI company IPsoft. Amelia got her name from Amelia Earhart, one of the pioneering women in American history who became the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. The tech Amelia combines automation, cognitive and emotional intelligence with Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to perform as a digital colleague. When Amelia was first created, her conversational abilities sent shockwaves in the AI community, raising fears of job losses, especially in countries like India where a large number of people are employed in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. But Dube, who left a teaching job at New York Un...