Category Health & Science

D Praveen: Need technology-based innovations to address inequities in treating chronic diseases

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By Neena Bhandari

Born in a middle-class family in Berhampur in Ganjam district of Orissa, a state that is still underdeveloped in the fields of health and education, the obvious option for Dr D Praveen was to try and get into medicine or engineering. At that time, the state had only three Government medical colleges making it very competitive, but he persevered and got admission in the Maharaja Krishna Chandra Gajapati (MKCG) Medical College.

“During my internship, I had a three-month rural posting in a primary health care [PHC] facility. It opened my eyes and showed the stark difference between health facilities in urban and rural areas. The infrastructure was in a state of disrepair, there were no doctors, and healthcare workers would seldom show up. People were dying of snakebites and accidental poisoning. I was motivated to work towards changing the health of the community at large”, says Dr Praveen, who heads the Institute’s Primary Health Care Research based in Hyderabad.

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HIV seeks refuge in immune cells to avoid full elimination

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By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 25.10.2017 (SciDev.Net): Genetically-intact HIV hides in the same cells of the human immune system that are supposed to attack and destroy pathogens, scientists at Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Sydney University, discover in a new study.

Previously, it was thought that HIV hides primarily in central memory T-cells during effective anti-HIV therapy. But, in the study published this month (19 October) in Cell Reports, the scientists show that replication-competent HIV persists in specific subsets of CD4+ immune memory T-cells.

HIV infects white blood cells known as T lymphocytes, particularly the CD4+ T cells that recognise infection and gets the immune system to respond. Following HIV infection, if anti-HIV therapy is not initiated, the number of CD4+ T cells in the blood begin to fall, though the process may be slow.

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Why you need to keep employees who experience the onset of disability

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By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 16.10.2017 (HRM): People who experience the onset of disability through illness are often managed out of the workplace. But helping them to stay usefully employed can offer benefits on both sides.

While running down a steep hill in Oman, Mark Glascodine suddenly felt that he was not in full control of his body. It was 1992 and he was working for Shell. What followed was six months of inconclusive medical tests. He felt slight imbalance at times, but it did not impede his work as the depot manager. It took five years before a neurologist in Melbourne, where he was then posted, confirmed that he was suffering from Friedreich’s Ataxia, a rare genetic disability that affects one in 50,000 people.

At 32, it was deemed a late onset in his case, but his condition soon began to deteriorate. The Shell HR team explained to him about medical retirement, which he took in 2004. “They were being nice. It helped not having to sell my house and allowed me to retrain in career counselling for people with disability,” he says.

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