Unethical clinical practices are always a truth and controversial medical fact. Guinea Pig Kids ,the BBC documentary of 2004 exposed how the city of New York has been forcing HIV-positive children under its supervision to be used as human guinea pigs in tests for experimental AIDS drug trials. But BBC was forced to apologize for this exposure after three years due to the resistance from medical community. Back to history, there are thousands of reports which says the cruel and unethical medical tests done on innocent victims. Interestingly African and other third world countries are the victims in many incidents. The facts speak for themselves: nearly 1600 people reportedly died in India during clinical trials of drugs conducted by various multinational pharmaceutical companies in 2008—10. New norms are announced for clinical trials in India now. It is a fact that pharmaceutical and medical trials are conducted on thousands of people every year. Human trial is a must for the safe launching of any medical product.
But the question here is that who is doing the test on whom and who is watching them?
Apple announced the next version of iOS on September 17th, 2014. Irrespective of the earlier versions, iOS 8 includes an app for maintaining personal health. The application gives a clear overview of our health and fitness data and also provides a storage space in iCloud Drive, so that we can store and access the data from anywhere. The app also collects data from other health applications and fitness devices and will provide a consolidated report. Compared to Samsung's 'SHealth', iOS Health is very much advanced. The app gathers details of exercise, heart rate, resting calories, blood sugar level, cholestrol etc. Informations like folate rate, diatary calories, body temperature, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate etc can also be recorded in the application, which will help us to have a detailed medical consultation. Blood Alcohol Content is another feature which will surely help us to understand the alcohol level in blood. This feature will be very helpful for drivers. Another feature, Sleep Analysis, helps to keep a track of your sleep, which determines your next day's efficiency. iOS Health app creates a unique medical id which will be helpful in case of emergency. Basic details like Blood group, allergies & reactions, medications etc can be accessed using the medical id, with out unlocking the phone. This will save the time and even life in case of an accident or any other emergency. It is expected that the forthcoming Apple watch will have the health app with inbuilt sensors to gather data automatically.
Clinical trial is a systematic research study of drug, diagnostic tool, or intervention, done on human being, with the objective of determining its safety and efficacy. The main purpose of clinical trial is to provide better and improved treatment in patient care. Clinical trial is conducted to know whether the new treatment is better than the existing treatments or whether the doses have any side effect, if yes, is it less than the existing system. Clinical trial has to be conducted only after the approval of the protocol, that are approved by a registered Institutional ethics committee. Ethics committee strictly monitors, whether patient's safety, right, well being and confidentiality is properly maintained and documented and can stop the study if breached, at any time. Clinical trial can only be started after the permission of the regulatory authority. Regulatory authority gives approval of the study that are approved in prior by Institutional ethics committee. The clinical study is designed with the strength of informations got from the pre-clinical studies, usually done in laboratory animals. Clinical trials are usually done in 4 phases namely, Phase I – Clinical pharmacology (usually on healthy volunteers), Phase II – Therapeutic exploratory trials (On limited number of patients), Phase III – Therapeutic confirmatory trials (on large number of patients) and phase IV – post marketing surveillance. All the drug that are coming to the market should pass through all these procedure, and this gives a biggest financial burden to the pharmaceutical company.
Universal Hospital is committed to provide best quality service and world-class patient care emphasising on both curative and preventive healthcare, says Dr Shabeer Nellikode, the Managing Director of Universal Hospital, AbuDhabi. Dr Shabeer was partcipating in our show “Meet The Masters”, where he shares his experience in the field of Health and Medics. He started his career with a small clinic and later expanded into his new venture “Universal Hospital” with advanced medical technologies. Dr Shabeer proudly says that Universal Hospital believes in paperless culture and has integrated all the departments through a hi-tech IT system that reduces the patient waiting time and allows them to get smooth and quick service experience through out the hospital.
Dubai charity spending more than Dh7 million for Vietnamese children
A Dubai charity is spending more than Dh7 million to help almost one million schoolchildren in Vietnam keep healthy enough to attend classes. The threeyear programme by Dubai Cares will benefit 905,000 youngsters in 2,600 Vietnamese schools. The project will aim to tackle the spread of neglected tropical diseases such as intestinal worms, which has been described as one of the leading forms of absenteeism from schools.
Catheterisation helps check your heart health
Heart catheterisation is used to check blood flow to the heart and to see how well the heart is pumping. It can measure blood pressure in the heart and how much oxygen is in the blood. This test will help your doctor to see how well your heart valves are working. And it will let them check for any defects in the wall of your heart, explains Dr Fekry El Deeb, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, Zulekha Hospital, Dubai.
Stress or tension at times is the body's way of protecting you. It helps one stay focussed, energetic and alert. It even acts as a life saver which gives you extra strength to defend yourself at the time of emergencies such as accidents and other unfamiliar incidents.
At the time of meeting up challenges, stress is something which keeps you on your toes, sharpens your concentration or even enables you to take an issue seriously when required. It is always necessary to know or recognise your stress levels because if it gets increased it might turn slightly dangerous and can creep on you easily.
Over stress can also affect your relationships at home, work and school with others and it can also take a toll on mental and physical health.
There are different types of stress namely:
Mental, Emotional, Physical, Chemical, Psychospiritual etc.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
10 fresh mushrooms, quartered
6 roma (plum) tomatoes, diced
1 cup fresh corn kernels
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained
and rinsed
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt
Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
Sautee the onion, red bell peppers, jalapeno,
mushrooms, tomatoes and corn for 10 minutes or until
the onions are translucent.
Season with black pepper, cumin and chili powder.
Stir in the black beans, chicken broth and salt bring to
a boil.
Remove 1 1/2 cups of the soup to food processor or
blender and puree.
Stir the bean mixture back into the soup.
Serve hot by itself or over rice.