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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Consumer's dilema - Improper storage of vaccines/medicines

It is frequently reported in the Indian media that children die after vaccination and inoculation. On investigation of the samples from the batch shows nothing wrong with the vaccines. It is in everybody’s knowledge that there are frequent power failures all over the country, and the medicines/vaccines for the treatment/prevention of deadly disease such as small pox, typhoid are supposed to be stored under certain deep freeze temperatures. In the absence of 100% back-up power supply, the deep freeze requirement for storage might not have met. Financial implications take precedence over the ethical issue of knowingly not complying with the requirements.

It may be true that the main distributor of the medicines/vaccines is well equipped as per the requirement. But, what if the smaller stockiest /distributors who are not so well-equipped and may even be ignorant of the stringent requirement of low temperature for storage of these special medicines/vaccines.

It is the responsibility of the government department concerned to educate the concerned persons at various levels, including the end-user, inspect the storage facilities and ensure that the life-saving medicines/vaccines are stored under specified environmental conditions so as to ensure the safety of the consumer.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Global food crisis

As per the published reports, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. This number is higher than the entire population of USA. The growing nutrition demand and the need of better quality food by this group of middle class population are some of the reasons quoted by US for the food shortage world wide. As such, the per capita food consumption by an American is five times higher than an Indian. There are already incidents of floods and draught in several regions’ claimed to be due to the global warming. Also, the evolution of bio-fuel policy in several countries are diverting the agricultural land for growing crops to produce bio-fuels, which yield better financial returns. Some of the food grains, like corn is used to produce ethanol, a gasoline substitute/mix to comply with the regulations of transportation fuel composition. Countries should stop producing fuel in competition with food.

Food reserves are falling down. Food price index has risen by over 40%. Today, we have additional requirement of food security to ensure feeding the millions in case of any large scale unexpected natural calamity occurring anywhere in the world.

Friday, May 2, 2008

PSLV launch - Congratulations

The Indian-made four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) launched 10 satellites at one go from Sriharikota, South India. Of the ten satellites, two are from India and the eight nano satellites belong to other countries. The total weight of the satellites was 820 kg. It is a great achievement and India thus becomes the second country in the world to do so. Russia launched 13 satellites in April 2007.

The concerned scientists need to be congratulated for the feat. In spite of the disappointing 6th Pay Commission recommendations, the scientists from the government laboratories have proved to be concerned more about the national prestige than the shrinking pay packet of the middle-level working officials.

There are concerns about the heavy traffic in space. It is reported that there are thousands of debris, related to the space activities moving around in the space, and the renewed apace activities world-wide will create apprehension amongst the public about the safety in space. The countries should also be ready with the emergency preparedness plans to handle any type of incidents in space which will affect the humans on earth. From global warming considerations, we are also burning a lot of fuel in space and discharging greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.