Bengaluru, Apr 2: A health worker, who was part of a team fighting against the Coronavirus disease in the city, was allegedly attacked by a mob and duped of her belongings at the Sadiq Layout in the Shivajinagar area on Thursday.
According to police sources, the health worker came under attack by a mob of youths when she was collecting data from those who were sick in the locality.
Bengaluru, Mar 27: India should take a cue from the UK and Italy and allow final year medical students to skip exam and bring them into the hospital system immediately to fight the war against COVID-19, noted cardiac surgeon Devi Prasad Shetty on Friday said.
The Chairman and Founder of the city-based Narayana Health said there should be some reforms in medical education like the UK and Italy.
In the UK, he noted, final year medical students have been told that they don't need to appear for the exam, and they will be given pass based on the past performance and they can get into the hospital system to fill the shortage.
Italy got 10,000 more doctors following the move to cut short the duration of MBBS by nine months, according to him.
COVID-19 battle can be only won by young doctors and young nurses. Its like a war, Shetty told PTI.
He said: Senior doctorsnone of them will be able to touch the patients because they are past the age of 50. A person who is past the age of 50 is very vulnerable himself.
This is a very contagious disease. "But we dont have that many battalion (of doctors). We need one and half lakh doctors to manage all these government
hospitals and private hospitals (to fight COVID-19)", he added.
We, the undersigned express our solidarity with Dr Zafarul Islam Khan, renowned scholar, journalist and presently Chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission.
We strongly condemn the continued media trial and targeting of Dr Zafarul Islam Khan for his Facebook post thanking Kuwait for expressing solidarity with Indian Muslims. In his Facebook post, he mentioned the appalling deterioration of human rights of Indian Muslims who have been targeted by Hindutva bigots. A few politicians with ulterior motives and news channel anchors known for spreading bigotry and Islamophobia have mischievously sought to misinterpret his statement and ridiculously label him as anti-Hindu and anti-India.
He has only reiterated what many citizens of India, public figures, international institutions, various European governments, the United States of America and United Nations human rights mechanisms have repeatedly underlined their concern at the increasing human rights abuse and violations of religious minorities in India.
Dr Zafarul Islam Khan is a man of integrity. He is a scholar who is known to stand up for constitutional freedoms and values.
His work as the Chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission has been warmly applauded by human rights activists and NGOs across different faiths. His timely interventions on problems of minorities in Delhi have made him a respectable figure among not only Muslims but Sikh, Christians, Jains and Parsis. He is a humanist in the truest sense of the word.
The hateful propaganda against Dr Khan is one more illustration as how certain Indians fail to differentiate between Hinduism, a religion and Hindutva which is a supremacist political ideology.
Dr Zafarul Islam Khan is a leading Indian intellectual whose niche area is Islamic studies and Arab world. He enjoys great respect in the Arab and Muslim world for his understanding and knowledge. He is an alumni of the esteemed Jamia Al-Azhar and Manchester University.
Dr Khan is known for taking bold public positions. He was the first Muslim scholar in the world who denounced ISIL, which later became IS or ISIS. He issued a statement opposing the barbaric crimes of ISIL (IS or ISIS) and Boko Haram against minorities. He takes strong stands against extremism of all sorts. That makes him a prominent critic of RSS.
Dr Khan is a scholar ambassador and earned international prestige for the India. Any attack and targeting of him, is actually an insult to Indian constitution and ethos.
We demand the appropriate authorities of the Government of India take strong legal action against those who are distorting Dr Khan’s Facebook post, and spreading vicious false propaganda against him.
Signed by:
Swami Agnivesh
Mohammad Adeeb
Arun Kumar (Prof)
Zafar Jung
Kamal Faruqui
Annie Namala
Kavita Krishnan
Subhash Gatade
Jawed Naqvi
Indu Pratap Singh
Avinash Kumar
Iftikhar Gilani
Anil Chamadia
Xavier Dias
Denzil Fernandes (Dr)
Irfan Engineer
Faisal Khan
John Dayal (Dr)
Mujtaba Farooque
Ravi Nair
Abubakr Sabbaq (Adv)
Gopal Menon
Bilal Khan
Ashok Choudhury
Jaffer Latief Najar
Mujahid Nafis
Aseem Sundan
Poojan Sahil
Ankur Otto
Mariya Salim
Tanweer Alam
Juned Khan
E M Abdul Rahiman
Aditi Dutta
Devika Prasad
Ameeque Jamei
Suhaib Ansari
Gurminder Singh
A C Michael
Neelima Sharma
Aftab Alam (Dr)
Dhruva Narayan
Syed Saif Ur Rahman
Tanweer Fazal (Dr)
Thouseef Madikeri (Dr)
N.D. Jayaprakash
Salahuddin Ansari
Satyajeet Nambiar
Suhail KK
Abu Sufiyan
Sujata Madhok
Tariq Khan
Violin Mathew Benjamin
Shamsul Islam (Prof)
Sreedhar Ramamurthi
Mohd. Shahid (Prof)
Anand Vivek Taneja (Dr)
Kush Kumar Singh (Dr)
Mangla Verma
Vipul Kumar
Waquar Hasan
Braham Prakash
Abdul Rashid Agwan
Fawaz Shaheen
Guman Singh
Mohammed Hafeez Ulla
Kp Sasi
Mushfique Raza Khan
Partha S Banerjee
Gautam Majumdar
S.Q. Masood
Aiman J Khan
M. K. Faizy
Tasleem Rehmani (Dr)
Mohammed Shafi
Lenin Raghuvanshi (Dr)
Malik Motasim Khan
Kripal Singh Mandloi
Labeed Shafi
Qamar Intakhab
Raees Ahmed Siddiqui
Laeeq Ahmed Khan
Anthony Arulraj
Sadiq Zafar
Biju Gopidasan
George Pulikuthiyil
Mohd Abdullah
Mohd Sorab Hussain
Mukunda Kattel
Sandeep Pendse
Paul Newman
Ovais Sultan Khan
Bengaluru, Apr 28: Karnataka has found that the rapid antibody test kits for COVID-19 that the Centre supplied to the state have only 47% sensitivity. The state will be returning the kits to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Karnataka had received 11,400 rapid antibody test kits from the ICMR a few days back, out of which it had sent around 200 of them to NIMHANS for validation.
After the ICMR, on Monday, sent a circular to all states to return the test kits to the suppliers, Dr CN Manjunath, Director, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, and nodal officer for lab testing in the state's COVID-19 task force, said, "We have cancelled the orders we placed to Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech and Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics for one lakh rapid antibody test kits. Since the ICMR supplied us with 11,400 kits out of the 6.5 lakh kits it procured, we will be returning the kits to them."
Manjunath told said that the validation at NIMHANS revealed the kits to have only 47% sensitivity. Sensitivity is the ability of a test to identify the true-positives in a population, i.e., the actual number of people who've been infected with the disease. With the rapid antibody testing kits being shelved, the state's plan to randomly test high risk groups has taken a backseat.
So far, the state has tested 43,791 samples.
Karnataka now has 22 testing facilities -- 14 government and seven private labs. Many private labs have not tested any samples so far because of the lack of test kits (the state has made it clear that it will not provide test kits to private labs). So, getting an ICMR approval for testing has become a moot point.p
Agreeing to the setback the state's plans of ramping up testing has taken, Manjunath said, "It is true that RT-PCR test kits are in shortage. Even Pune's Mylabs had a shortage in supplying test kits. But we are relying on institutes like Kidwai, Narayana Health and Biocon's Syngene that have received approval for testing. They're big institutes and we hope that they will test a large number of samples."
On reports that the Centre has RT-PCR test kits that will last for only a week, he said, "We have test kits that will last for eight to 10 days. We have ordered for more. We are hoping to receive them before the current kits run out."
Comments
Add new comment