2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine for
fighting malaria has roots in India?
Kolkata: The malaria
cure artemisinin, whose discovery fetched Chinese scientist, Youyou Tu the
Nobel prize in medicine this year, has roots in India, claims an Indian
scientist.
Senior scientist from Hyderabad, Dr Sunil Kumar Verma has
challenged the basis of giving the Nobel prize to Youyou Tu for the discovery
of Artemisinin, an active compound extracted from a medicinal plant called
Artemisia Annua that is used for curing malaria.
In his Facebook post, Verma, has said artemisinin was a
variant of artemisin and it was mentioned in scientific literature published
over 100 years ago.
To further his claims, Verma uploaded a snapshot of the book
titled "Indian Medicinal Plants" published in 1918 by Lieutenant
Colonel K.R. Kirtikar and Major B.D. Basu, which documents the use of artemisin
to cure "intermittent and remittent fever", the common phrase for
malarial fever, till 1880.
"Until that time,
malaria was known in India with its symptoms i.e intermittent and remittent
fever for which the use of artemisin was described in above verses," said
Verma, a former Commonwealth scholar and a PhD from Oxford University, in his
Facebook post.
Verma said the "name of artemisia species found in India
is Ajavayan (ajwain) that is an integral part of our home kitchen".
Challenging the grounds, Verma, principal scientist at Centre
for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), questioned: "If the above
knowledge is documented in the book named 'Indian Medicinal Plants' written a
hundred years ago, how come artemisin became a traditional Chinese medicine and
not Indian traditional medicine?"
"Even if it was used in China too (other than India) as
traditional medicine for the treatment of intermittent fever (malaria), then
the credit for this knowledge to the use of artemisin and its purification
should be given to both India and China and not China alone," he said.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
20.10.2015
Government
allows transfer of blood between blood banks
New Delhi: The health ministry has
permitted transfer of blood from one blood bank to
another, a step that will help in transferring blood to the hospitals that face
scarcity, an official statement said on Monday.
The ministry has also fixed an exchange
value for surplus plasma available at some blood banks in the country.
"Now, an exchange value of
Rs.1,600 per litre of plasma has been fixed and the blood banks with surplus
plasma can exchange it for consumables, equipments or plasma derived products,
as per their need," the health ministry said in the statement.
"Earlier, in the absence of the
enabling provision, surplus plasma was traded or sold by the blood banks
without any regulation whatsoever," the statement said.
The
decision was taken after the recommendations made by the National Blood
Transfusion Council (NBTC), an apex body for formulating policy matters
pertaining to the organization, operation, standards and training of a
sustainable and safe blood transfusion service for the country.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
20.10.2015
Change is the
law of life; and those who look only to the past or the present are certain to
miss the future
John F. Kennedy
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