Vaccines essential for reducing burden of infectious diseases, says Gagandeep Kang

31/08/2020 1 Comment read Gender, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 31.08.2020 (SciDev.Net): Internationally renowned for her inter-disciplinary research on transmission, development and prevention of enteric infections and their sequelae in children in India, Gagandeep Kang is the first Indian woman scientist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is a member of the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.

Currently, a professor of microbiology in the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences in her alma mater, the Christian Medical College Vellore, Kang grew up in a science-oriented household, reading Isaac Asimov. She attended 10 schools in 12 years as her father, a mechanical engineer in the Indian Railways, was transferred across northern and eastern India.

The frequent transfers taught her to be adaptable and learn outside the classroom. She spent time learning on her own with help from her parents. They would visit mines to understand about minerals and chemicals. Her father would bring home lenses, concave mirrors and Woulfe bottles and they set up their own lab and herbarium.

Continue reading →

It was meant to be a ground-breaking year for gender equality, but COVID-19 widened inequalities

24/07/2020 0 Comments read Education, Gender, Health & Science

Suhana Khan teaching children from her extended family in Kesharpur village in Rajasthan (India). Photo Credit: © Bodh Shiksha Samiti

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 24.07.2020 (IPS): Sixteen-year-old Suhana Khan had just completed her grade 10 exams in March, when India imposed a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Since then, she has been spending her mornings and evenings doing household chores, from cooking and cleaning to fetching drinking water from the tube well.

“I am really missing school. Nearly half the year has gone and we have no books and no teachers to teach. We don’t know if and when we will be able to resume our studies,” Khan, from Kesharpur village in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, told IPS. The disappointment is palpable in her voice. While teachers at the local government school are supposed to conduct online classes, most of the 350 households in the village have only one mobile phone with internet connectivity, which male members in the family take to work.

Continue reading →

Access to reproductive healthcare must to sustain development in Senegal

14/07/2020 0 Comments read Gender, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 14.07.2020 (IPS): Pregnant with her second child, 30-year-old Ndiabou Niang was enduring pelvic pain, but couldn’t afford to access prenatal care in Diabe Salla, a village on the outskirts of the small town of Thilogne in north-east Senegal. Her husband was unemployed and her earnings of under CFAF 10,000 (17 USD) from selling seasonal fruits in the local market were insufficient to make ends meet.

Duing her last prenatal visit, she was prescribed some tests, an ultrasound and some medicines that would cost CFAF 39,000 (USD 67). But as the amount needed was astronomical for her meagre income, she silently suffered. Many pregnant rural women, living below poverty line, don’t follow through on the prescription and delay their prenatal visit till they are in their third trimester, which puts them at greater risk of pregnancy-related complications. Continue reading →