Posts tagged ‘Harsh Vardhan’

12/04/2015

Drugs for malaria, osteoporosis, diabetes: Harsh Vardhan – The Hindu

‘The “candidate drugs” for malaria, osteoporosis and diabetes were currently undergoing clinical trials’

The “candidate drugs” for malaria, osteoporosis and diabetes were currently undergoing clinical trials. Photo: V.V.Krishnan

The Indian pharmaceutical sector would soon be showcasing ‘candidate drugs’ for malaria, osteoporosis and diabetes, Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday.

With further R&D, important breakthroughs could be on the horizon for these diseases, he said following a visit to the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow, a wing of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Addressing scientists, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was committed to making India one of the world’s leading destinations for end-to-end drug discovery and innovation by 2020.

“I am confident that the drug laboratories under the CSIR are capable of backing up the Swasth Swachh Bharat Mission. Our scientists are focussing on both infectious and lifestyle diseases. We are developing next generation drugs, biologics, biosimilars, gene therapeutics, stem cell therapeutics, personalised medicine and multifunctional nanomedicine,” said Dr. Vardhan.

Indian R&D efforts in government laboratories like CSIR-CDRI, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad) and CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB, Kolkata) have a track record in making drugs for kala azar, filaria, leprosy and tuberculosis available at affordable rates to the common man, he said.

via Drugs for malaria, osteoporosis, diabetes: Harsh Vardhan – The Hindu.

29/07/2014

Why India’s family planning program is unhappy with parents

It’s not just politicians resisting sex education, but parents as well, according to Mahinder Watsa, former president of the Family Planning Association of India, which turned 65 last week.

Watsa, perhaps better known today for his newspaper column dispensing often wry advice on sex, was also the first to push for the inclusion of sex education in the FPAI’s programmes in the late 1970s.

“You need to have special classes for parents,” he said. “Parents should be the ones who should be involved deeply, but they pass the job on to teachers.” But teachers, he said, do not take an active part in sex education for fear of being criticised by both parents and politicians.

This fear might partly stem from the pronouncements of political leaders. In the latest instance, last month, health minister Harsh Vardhan, a qualified doctor, advocated the Gandhian route to birth control through abstinence and yoga and said that sex education in its current form should not be taught in schools. He later clarified that he was only against graphical representation of what he termed “vulgarity”.

But his remarks have yet again underlined the political class’s confused and often misguided approach to sex education.

In contrast, over the years, the focus of the FPAI, which was founded in 1949, has expanded from issues of fertility and controlling the number of children a healthy family should have to the rights of young people in accessing information and knowledge about their sexuality.

via Scroll.in – News. Politics. Culture..

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