New superbug NDM-1 and the misuse of antibiotics in IndiaIs the new superbug NDM-1 really here in Delhi? Can it be there in the water that I drink? In the hospitals? Is it really resistant to all antibiotics? But how can modern medicine function without antibiotics? Are they just sounding an alarm, or do I need to worry? What if I get a drug-resistant infection?
As science begins to solve the mystery of why heart attacks strike apparently healthy people without warning, Indian doctors keep in step with the new predictive theme of cardiac care.
Cardiologist Dr Ashok Seth keeps a photograph of Alok Tanwar in his office. It shows a robust young man, carefree, arms around his wife and daughters, laughing into the camera.
Off Sarkhej highway on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Solapur highway in Pune, NH 7 near Whitefield in Bangalore, Ambala-Chandigarh highway at Lalru--steel-and-glass buildings dot the landscape. From the outside they look like archetypical expressions of new-age planning.
The tummy, they say, is a mirror of emotions. A stick of a girl in the outpatients department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, has a stomach issue. In that crowded OPD, where everybody befriends everybody to while away the waiting hours, she sits like a zombie, eyes fixed on the ground. Her parents don't quite know why she gets those excruciating bellyaches.
