The safety concerns about India go beyond the fear of being burned in a fire. Other major concerns include:
1. Fake pharmaceuticals are a big worry. In fact, 75 percent of counterfeit drugs supplied world over have origins in India, according to a report released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
2. Lack of proper hygiene contributes to a large number of infections in hospital settings. A recent investigation into the death of 13 women in a Rajasthan hospital found that the poor hygiene standard in the hospital were flagrantly overlooked, according to Times of India.
Haq's Musings: Is India Safe For Medical Tourism?
#India's Sun Pharmaceutical’s factory in #Gujarat gets #FDA warning for quality issues. #Pharma India’s Sun Pharmaceutical Gets FDA Warning - WSJ via @WSJ
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., India’s largest drugmaker by sales, said Saturday that one of its factories is under increased scrutiny from U.S. regulators.
The generic-drug maker’s factory in Halol, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Warning letters are issued when the FDA isn't satisfied with a drugmaker’s plan to fix quality issues spotted by the regulator.
This is the latest setback for India’s pharmaceutical companies, which have struggled with quality issues under the increased scrutiny from the FDA. Indian companies account for around 40% of generic drug sales in the U.S.
U.S. inspectors in September last year said they were concerned with how Sun Pharma workers at its plant handled quality-test data and the plant’s “sterile environment,” said Dilip Shanghvi, Sun Pharma’s managing director.
If Sun Pharma is unable to assure the FDA that it can fix the problems, the regulator will issue an import alert, barring that factory from producing medicines for the U.S.
Sun Pharma makes some of its most profitable products at the Halol factory, including pre-filled syringes that need to manufactured in a sterile environment.
The Halol factory is continuing to produce drugs as it tries to fix quality issues, better train its staff and automate more of the manufacturing process, Mr. Shanghvi said.
The company has already moved production of some of the drugs produced at Halol to mitigate any impact on sales should the Halol plant be unable to export to the U.S., he said.
A deadly epidemic that could have global implications is quietly sweeping India, and among its many victims are tens of thousands of newborns dying because once-miraculous cures no longer work.
These infants are born with bacterial infections that are resistant to most known antibiotics, and more than 58,000 died last year as a result, a recent study found. While that is still a fraction of the nearly 800,000 newborns who die annually in India, Indian pediatricians say that the rising toll of resistant infections could soon swamp efforts to improve India’s abysmal infant death rate. Nearly a third of the world’s newborn deaths occur in India.
“Reducing newborn deaths in India is one of the most important public health priorities in the world, and this will require treating an increasing number of neonates who have sepsis and pneumonia,” said Dr. Vinod Paul, chief of pediatrics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the leader of the study. “But if resistant infections keep growing, that progress could slow, stop or even reverse itself. And that would be a disaster for not only India but the entire world.”
In visits to neonatal intensive care wards in five Indian states, doctors reported being overwhelmed by such cases.
“Five years ago, we almost never saw these kinds of infections,” said Dr. Neelam Kler, chairwoman of the department of neonatology at New Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, one of India’s most prestigious private hospitals. “Now, close to 100 percent of the babies referred to us have multidrug resistant infections. It’s scary.”
These babies are part of a disquieting outbreak. A growing chorus of researchers say the evidence is now overwhelming that a significant share of the bacteria present in India — in its water, sewage, animals, soil and even its mothers — are immune to nearly all antibiotics.
Newborns are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are fragile, leaving little time for doctors to find a drug that works. But everyone is at risk. Uppalapu Shrinivas, one of India’s most famous musicians, died Sept. 19 at age 45 because of an infection that doctors could not cure.
While far from alone in creating antibiotic resistance, India’s resistant infections have already begun to migrate elsewhere.
“India’s dreadful sanitation, uncontrolled use of antibiotics and overcrowding coupled with a complete lack of monitoring the problem has created a tsunami of antibiotic resistance that is reaching just about every country in the world,” said Dr. Timothy R. Walsh, a professor of microbiology at Cardiff University.
Indeed, researchers have already found “superbugs” carrying a genetic code first identified in India — NDM1 (or New Delhi metallo-beta lactamase 1) —around the world, including in France, Japan, Oman and the United States.
Anju Thakur’s daughter, born prematurely a year ago, was one of the epidemic’s victims in Amravati, a city in central India. Doctors assured Ms. Thakur that her daughter, despite weighing just four pounds, would be fine. Her husband gave sweets to neighbors in celebration.
Three days later, Ms. Thakur knew something was wrong. Her daughter’s stomach swelled, her limbs stiffened and her skin thickened — classic signs of a blood infection. As a precaution, doctors had given the baby two powerful antibiotics soon after birth. Doctors switched to other antibiotics and switched again. Nothing worked. Ms. Thakur gave a puja, or prayer, to the goddess Durga, but the baby’s condition worsened. She died, just seven days old.
“We tried everything we could,” said Dr. Swapnil Talvekar, the pediatrician who treated her. Ms. Thakur was inconsolable. “I never thought I’d stop crying,” she said.
A test later revealed that the infection was immune to almost every antibiotic. The child’s rapid death meant the bacteria probably came from her mother, doctors said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/w...-babies-and-pose-an-overseas-threat.html?_r=0
And when the history repeats itself, you will get a new capital city.
