Category:

Health

Latest

Governments need to be ‘insurers of last resort’ to protect businesses from pandemic risks: Report

Jad Ariss, Managing Director, The Geneva Association, said: “It is a tragedy that businesses, particularly SMEs, have suffered so much financial loss during the pandemic as a result of the lockdowns, which were beyond their control. The public sector had to step in with multi-trillion dollar emergency relief measures. Governments and insurers must work together on how to close the massive protection gap exposed by COVID-19, with governments as the leading players.”

read more

‘Please help!’ India’s Covid-19 tragedy spills onto social media

The collapse of the country’s decrepit public health system is evident in the gut-wrenching photos on social media of multiple Covid patients sharing a single hospital bed, a line of ambulances outside a hospital in Mumbai, and people dying as they wait for oxygen. Government helplines are broken. Thousands of social media forwards plead for the antiviral drug Remdesivir, and many more seek donor plasma.

read more

Notified new policy on rare diseases, approved budget of Rs 25 crore for treatment: Centre to HC

Regarding funding of the treatment to be provided to the children suffering from rare diseases, the ministry said that funds allocated for the purpose in the financial year 2020-21 were unutilised and lapsed.

However, Rs 4.10 crore under the rare disease component of the umbrella scheme of Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi (RAN) for 2020-21 has been remitted to AIIMS, the ministry said and added that the budget estimate for 2021-22 for treating rare diseases was Rs 25 crore and this amount can be enhanced based on its utilisation.

read more

Covid vaccine-makers largely protected on side effects

While some governments will pay compensation due to sufferers, others assume it is the responsibility of the companies even after drug agencies back the vaccines.
In the US, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act authorises the health secretary “to limit legal liability for losses relating to the administration of medical countermeasures such as diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines”.

read more

Israel logs Indian Covid-19 variant, sees some vaccine efficacy against it

An initial seven cases of the Indian variant were detected in Israel last week among people arriving from abroad and who have since undergone preliminary testing, the Health Ministry said.

“The impression is that the Pfizer vaccine has efficacy against it, albeit a reduced efficacy,” the ministry’s director-general, Hezi Levy, told Kan public radio, saying the number of cases of the variant in Israel now stood at eight.

read more