Miscellany

Per capita Green House Gases emission in India is 1.9 tonnes in carbon dioxide equivalent terms as opposed to 24.3 in the US and 10.5 tonenes in Europe. But 150 million Indians at the top of the economic ladder live luxuriously enough to produce 4.5 times more carbon emissions than what the 800 million poor do. A family of four that owns a vehicle, has a flat or house and whose joint income is more than Rs. 50,000 a month is likely to emit as much as the average Western European family. According to most estimates, the ‘safe level’ of average global per capital emissions is about 2 tonnes by 2050. This means although India’s average is below this target, the middle class emits much more and and needs to reduce its emissions dramatically in order to make room for the rest of the population as it emerges out of poverty, which will undoubtedly increase their greenhouse gas ‘footprint’.

(Ref: Sujatha Byravan, independent scholar from Chennai in The Hindu, September 2, 2008)

You are wrong if you thought that if the OPEC nations capped their oil wells, the world industry would come to a grinding halt. The United States alone has just more than 700 million barrels of crude oil in the strategic Reserve. Government stockpile in Europe add nearly 200 million barrels of refined products. In Asia, the US allies such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines etc hold another 400 million barrels. China is creating a reserve that should reach more than 100 million barrels by 2010. Even private US companies hold about one billion barrels in stocks. Other countries around the world have stocked four billion barrels.
(abridged from a report in New York Times.)

Next time your next door doctor goes on a foreign jaunt, don’t ask him as to who funded his trip. Most likely, a drug company is paying for his airfare, five-star stay, transport and the goodies the corrupt man has loaded in his return baggage for his family members.

Increasingly, pharmaceuticals around the world are seen in league with doctors to pinch money from patients’ pockets. Doctors who are taken on foreign trips ‘to medical conferences or professional conclaves’ are being bribed to prescribe newer and costlier medicine being produced by the drug companies to their consumers.

A report by Britain’s most respected daily, The Guardian says that Astra Zenica paid 2,500 pound for a doctor at the Royal Bournemouth Trust and 1,500 pounds for a doctor at the Sheffield teaching hospital to attend a cancer conference in Texas. Aventis, world’s fourth largest pharmaceutical company paid for doctors at the Countess of Chester Trust to go to conference in Cape Town and Barcelona.

GSK, the biggest British drug company paid 1,200 pound for a consultant at the Sheffield Teaching Hospital to attend the 11th International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder in Turkey last June. However, information of this sort is extremely difficult to come by as self interest bar the beneficiaries to speak out.

This is yet another way of pushing costlier medicine in the market and rake in billions of dollars in profit by drug companies. The companies in the United States itself spent $19 billion on financing the junkets of doctors who are then obliged to prescribe these medicines. These doctors then exaggerate the risk of cholesterol, blood pressure and bone density and pressurise their patients (nay clients) to go for the newly arrived medicine. Indeed they often prescribe unsafe medicine such as Vioxx, the arthritis drug which was found to cause heart attacks. Joe Collier, former professor of Medicine Policy at St. George’s Hospital, London terms these practices against the professional code of ethics the doctors are bound to follow.

Since medicines are manufactured by commercial companies, the World Health Organisation looked into overuse, misuse and abuse of medicine around the world in 1976. It formulated a manual for the rational use of medicine and prepared a List of Essential medicine. The objective information on the rational use of medicines was then extremely limited, especially in developing countries. Today, at least 135 countries have their own therapeutic manuals and formulas, which provide health professionals with up to date, accurate and unbiased advice on the rational use of drugs. In case the readers would like to know more about the rational use of medicine, pricing policies, and their uses, they could log on to: http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/rational_use/en/index.html

Tucked away in the by-lanes of Rampur in western Uttar Pradesh in a humble little two-room house live Shoeb and Zubair Shamsi, their 27 year-old sister Saba Mahboob Shamsi and their parents. The parents struggled hard to bring up the kids, with the father toiling till age and its associated   weakness compelled him to stay at home.

Shoeb and Zubair dote on their sister Saba who is suffering from myasthenia gravis. Myasthenia gravis is a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease characterized by varying degrees of weakness of the skeletal muscles of the body. The name myasthenia gravis, which is Latin and Greek in origin, literally means “grave muscle weakness.” The hallmark of myasthenia gravis is muscle weakness that increases during periods of activity and improves after periods of rest. Certain muscles such as those that control eye and eyelid movement, facial expression, chewing, talking, and swallowing are often, but not always, involved in the disorder. The muscles that control breathing and neck and limb movements may also be affected.  Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease because the immune system - which normally protects the body from foreign organisms - mistakenly attacks itself.

Saba has to be on medicines lifelong which are very expensive. Every bottle of the prescribed medicine “Mastenol” that contains 150 tablets costs a whopping Rs 2700 and is available with very few chemists.

Shoeb takes tuitions for children, going from home to home on his cycle, while his brother Zubair is a taxi driver. Their combined income is Rs 4000 per month. The house rent is also another expense, as are medicines for Saba and Shoeb’s aging and ailing parents.  Facing a severe financial crunch, the family finds it difficult to make ends meet.

But the medicines are a must for Saba as it is her lifeline. The family appeals to the community to contribute or guide or help in any way they can so that Saba’s medicines can be bought for her regularly.

Health is wealth and Saba, too, can, like any other girl, dream of being a healthy human being and in future a healthy wife and mother too.

For more details, contact Saba or Shoeb Shamsi at: c/o Mr. Mahboob Ali Shamsi, Ghair Peepal Wala, Saifal Khan. Near House of Datt Bhai, Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, Pin Code 244901. Mobile (Shoeb Shamsi):9359751033