Darwinism expunged from India's school textbooks

Speed read Darwin's theory removed from India's school textbooks Science educators urge restoration in open petition Educators say COVID-19 rationale to delete chapters not tenable [NEW DELHI] Science educators in India are urging the government to restore material on Darwinian evolution which has been removed from science textbooks on the grounds that the study load on schoolchildren needs to be lightened after the COVID-19 pandemic. "The theory of evolution by natural selection as propounded by Charles Darwin and developed and extended subsequently has had a major influence on modern biology and medicine, and indeed all of modern science. According to Raghunandan, Hindu mythology holds that the deity Vishnu descends to Earth as an "avatar” (form) whenever the cosmic order is disturbed.

Patent-free Corbevax promises vaccine equity

Reddy expects Corbevax to be cheaper than most existing vaccines mainly because of the intellectual property rights waiver announced by its main co-creator, Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and professor at the Baylor College of Medicine. [...]it should be the least expensive COVID vaccine available yet.” [...]it should be the least expensive COVID vaccine available yet — Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) December 28, 2021 “This vaccine can be made locally all over the world, and we’ve now technology transferred our Texas Children’s vaccine to producers in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Botswana.

Improve antibiotics access to beat ‘silent pandemic’

Speed read Increasing access to antimicrobials ‘can help stop resistance’ More effective treatment is key Antimicrobial resistance turning into ‘a silent pandemic’ [NEW DELHI] Better access to antibiotics and antifungal medicines could slow down the spread of drug resistance in the global South, according to a new study released Thursday (9 June).* Following decades of careless exposure to antibiotics, superbugs are now widespread and, according to the World Health Organization, represent a “global crisis that threatens a century of progress in health”. [...]shortages of essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries lead to patients receiving no treatment or less effective alternatives, giving bacteria and fungi opportunities to develop resistance.” Jayasree K. Iyer, chief executive officer Access to Medicine Foundation The Foundation’s paper uses case studies to illustrate how pharmaceutical companies can steer around such complex challenges and make antibiotics and antifungals more widely available.

Cow dung fires linked to black fungus epidemic in India

Mucormycosis, a dangerous infection caused by Mucorales fungi, has an overall mortality rate of 54 per cent, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Jessy Skaria, an author of the paper and an independent researcher from Houston, Texas, tells SciDev.Net that the unusually high incidence of COVID-19- associated mucormycosis in India was attributed by most physicians and researchers to a combination of SARS-Cov-2 viral infection with diabetes and treatment using steroids. “To establish the role of herbivore dung in the causation of COVID-19-associated mucormycosis, case control studies, genetic (phylogenetic) studies and other aerosol viability analysis of Mucorales spores, post-burning, is critical,” Rodney Rohde, chair and professor of clinical laboratory science at Texas State University, tells SciDev.Net.

Taliban ban on jabs may trigger COVID-19 spike

Carl Latkin, vice chair, Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, US, says he is pessimistic about Afghanistan’s medical ability to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, given the need for medical expertise, money and supply chains. The vaccination ban was imposed on all areas held by the Taliban in 2020 while critical areas in the South Region had been deprived of immunisation for nearly three years affecting around 1 million children, and leading to a significant drop in population immunity and heightening the risk of further intensification and geographical spread of the wild poliovirus, the NEAP document said. According to the document, more than 3 million children are currently inaccessible with the risk worsened by the COVID-19 disruptions in health delivery and there was “immense need to intensify neutral negotiations” with the Taliban.

India’s health systems buckle under new COVID-19 wave

Despite the country’s huge population, the number of cases remained manageable while being showered with global attention as India became the main hub for vaccine production. What else could explain the failure to heed warnings issued in November by a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare on COVID-19, including possible shortages of medical oxygen? A worrisome aspect pointed out in a recent press conference held by Vinod Paul, member of the Niti Aayog, India’s official public policy think tank, was that Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities along with peri-urban areas have recorded recent spikes in the spread of infection which would leave rural areas with weak health infrastructure vulnerable to collapse.

Hospital superbug traced to remote island beach

Anuradha Chowdhary, professor of mycology, Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute, University of Delhi, and corresponding author of the study, says that while C. auris isolates found on the beach were multidrug-resistant, those found in the remoter salt marshes of the Andaman islands were not resistant to ordinary anti-fungal drugs. “Thorough screening of patients and their environment is required as also cohorting (putting together) of patients who are colonised by C. auris —since they continuously shed viable yeast cells from their skin and contaminate hospital environments.” The present study notes that a hypothesis published July 2019 in mBiosuggests that C. auris might be native to wetlands and that its emergence as a human pathogen may be linked to the effects of global warming effects on wetlands.

Eyebrows raised over India’s COVID-19 vaccine approval

Speed read Covaxin, India’s indigenous COVID-19 vaccine, cleared for emergency use Oxford University’s Covishield, produced in India, also gets similar clearance Covaxin yet to complete phase 3 clinical trials and data remains unpublished [NEW DELHI] India’s approval for emergency use of a locally developed COVID-19 vaccine that is still undergoing clinical trials has raised a storm of criticism by medical experts and organisations involved in public health. WHO welcomes India’s decision giving emergency use authorization to #COVID-19 #vaccines – Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region pic.twitter.com/jyQGI6Gymp — WHO South-East Asia (@WHOSEARO) January 3, 2021 But medical scientists and voluntary agencies involved in public health and the rational use of drugs are alarmed at the bypassing of clinical trial protocols and the release of the indigenously developed Covaxin without publishing or publicising trial results. According to Shiva, what is at stake is India’s reputation as a major source of reliable and cheap vaccines for the developing world and one controlled by regulatory institutions known for strict conformance to protocols and for carrying out science-based assessments before granting approvals.

Delhi’s poor return to dirty fuel in COVID-19 lockdown

Speed read Some five million people were using unclean cooking fuels during COVID-19 lockdown Urban poverty worse than in India’s rural areas because of cramped living conditions Without subsidies millions cannot afford to use cooking gas in Delhi [NEW DELHI] COVID-19 lockdowns exposed many truths but none so stark as the poverty that exists in the Indian capital of New Delhi as desperate urban poor families were compelled to switch to wood and dung to keep home fires going. A study released this month by the environmental NGO Chintan suggests that urban poverty may be worse than India’s rural areas because of unhygienic living conditions, including high indoor pollution levels generated by burning biomass in confined living spaces. According to the study 36 per cent of low-income housing groups in New Delhi rely on ‘unclean’ sources of fuel for their cooking needs.

Boost incentives to grow agro-industrial parks – report

Agro-industrial parks are dedicated business areas that focus on processing farm produce, and on farming inputs such as fertilisers, according to the new study released by the Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) programme The World Bank says that COVID-19 led to “severe and widespread increases in global food insecurity, affecting vulnerable households in almost every country, with impacts expected to continue into 2022 and possibly beyond”. According to data from the analysis group AgFunder, India saw funding for agri-food technology rise from US$619 million during the first half of 2020 to US$2 billion in the first half of 2021, underlining the growing potential of the sector. CASA says that agro-industrial parks are “complex, long-term projects that require strategic and policy continuity and alignment between – and contributions from – numerous stakeholders, including government bodies, financiers, private sector actors, civil society organisations and external supporters”. Since agro-industrial parks are capital-intensive projects that typically take ten years to be fully established and generate significant public and private revenues, large-scale public funds may need to be mobilised to finance the project as well as co-financing via public-private partnerships, the paper says.