VA-SenaMay 21, 2020
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6min47550

The main animal vaccines are Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) vaccines to protect against viral goat plague, Brucella vaccine to protect against Brucellosis and FMD vaccine to protect against Foot and mouth disease (FMD)

 

Industry-PhramaUpdate-21May-005

 

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

  • A National Animal Disease Control Programme to cover around 53 crore animals has been announced
  • Indian animal healthcare industry is expected to grow to Rs 7,500 crore by the end of 2020
  • Indian Immunologicals and Hester Biosciences are the only two suppliers of Brucella vaccines
  • Brucella vaccine market to increase by 12 to 15 times

 

Domestic animal vaccine specialists Indian Immunologicals, Hester Biosciences, Brilliant and Biovet are likely to share almost the entire pie of soon-to-be-launched Rs 13,343 crore programme for vaccine supplies. The 5-year programme aims to immunise all cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat and pig population in India. The amount includes the cost of vaccine as well as execution of the immunisation programme.

As part of the government’s third tranche of the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on last Friday announced a National Animal Disease Control Programme to cover around 53 crore animals, of which 1.5 crore cows and buffaloes have already been vaccinated. According to estimates, India has 14.6 crore female cows (total 19.3 crore male and female), 10 crore female buffaloes (total 11 crore male and female), 7.4 crore sheep, 14.9 crore goat and 90 lakh swine and they have to be vaccinated.

The main animal vaccines are Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) vaccines to protect against viral goat plague, Brucella vaccine to protect against Brucellosis and FMD vaccine to protect against Foot and mouth disease (FMD). Some countries cull the Brucella infected cattle. Highest incidence of Brucella is observed in the Mediterranean region, sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, Peru, and Mexico. Several countries in Western and Northern Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have eradicated the disease.

“So far, the average Brucella vaccine market in India was about Rs 8 crore a year and this will catapult by twelve to fifteen times annually. The central government has already tendered 4.13 crore doses valuing approximately Rs 100 crore worth Brucella vaccines for the period up to September 2021,”  says Rajiv Gandhi, CEO and Managing Director of Ahmedabad-based Hester Biosciences.

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) promoted Indian Immunologicals (IIL) and Hester Biosciences are the only two suppliers of Brucella vaccines in the country. Over 60 percent of Brucella vaccines requirement last year was supplied by Hester Biosciences, which hit headlines recently for foraying into human vaccine development with a vaccine for Covid-19, partnering with IIT Guwahati.

Similarly, in the case of PPR vaccines, the government requirement will be about 23 crore doses to vaccinate nearly 23 crore goats and sheep. The manufacturers of vaccines in the fray are only IIL, Hester and Biomed. This year, the government is expected to tender for 7 crore doses worth Rs 12 crore. In the case of FMD disease, the government has tendered for 92.5 crore doses for the period up to January 2021, covering cattle, buffalo, goat, sheep and swine valued at over Rs 1,000 crore. The main manufacturers of FMD vaccines are only domestic players like IIL, Brilliant and Biovet.

Apart from this, poultry vaccines are a major market worth Rs 350-450 crore and is growing at 6-10 percent. It is dominated by companies like Venkys India, Hester and a few multinational companies. The Indian animal healthcare industry is expected to grow to Rs 7,500 crore by the end of 2020, almost doubling from the Rs 3,920 crore in 2016.  During this period, dairy healthcare products are expected to record a 12-15% CAGR while poultry could grow at 8-10%. The companion animal and other segments are expected to record a CAGR of 18-20% and 8-10%, respectively.

Of the Rs 7,500 crore, current cumulative vaccination market is less than Rs 1,300 crore as the disease control efforts are mainly confided to some state animal healthcare and livestock welfare departments. The cost of logistics of vaccines, tagging the animals and follow up tracking and related paraphernalia, is almost equivalent to the price of the vaccines. Institutional and private sales were only 10 percent of the market. Except in dog vaccination, the health vaccine market in the country is dominated by local companies.

Multinational animal vaccine companies so far have not seen India as a significant market and their presence is negligible.


VA-SenaMay 21, 2020
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6min43430

According to a study by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the northern Italian city of Nembro recorded more deaths during March 2020 than between January and December 2019. However, only approximately half of all deaths recorded this spring were classified as confirmed COVID-19 deaths. The study shows that the health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may go far beyond official COVID-19 death counts. It also shows the important role of all-cause mortality in quantifying the full impact of the pandemic. The study’s findings have been published in The BMJ.

PhramaUpdate-21May-000

 

During the current pandemic, the northern Italian region of Lombardy has been one of the most severely affected areas in Europe. Despite high death counts officially attributed to COVID-19 during the worst part of the pandemic, doubts were soon raised over the accuracy of these data. Official figures did not appear to reflect actual, observable pressures on the health care system. This was also the case in Nembro, a small town in the Bergamo province of Lombardy, which has a population of 11,500. In order to quantify the true impact of the pandemic on the local health care system, a team of researchers led by Tobias Kurth, MD, ScD, Director of Charité’s Institute of Public Health (IPH), studied overall mortality figures, looking at all deaths regardless of their cause. Working alongside colleagues from the Centro Medico Santagostino in Milan, the researchers found the following: During the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, the number of all-cause deaths was approximately double that of confirmed COVID-19-related deaths.

In order to accurately quantify mortality rate regardless of cause of death – known as all-cause mortality – the researchers used data for the period between January 2012 and mid-April 2020. They obtained data from several sources: the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), Nembro’s registration office, and the Lombardy region COVID-19 dashboard. “Nembro is a small town with a very stable population and very little immigration and emigration over time,” explains Prof. Kurth. He adds: “Given its size and the availability of quality data sources, this town provided the ideal conditions for a robust, descriptive epidemiological study to quantify the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as its impact on the health of this local community.”

According to the researchers’ analyses, in recent years the town typically recorded all-cause death counts just over 100 per year. In 2018 and 2019, for instance, the town recorded 128 and 121 deaths, respectively. This contrasts sharply with the 194 deaths seen during the three-and-a-half-month period between 1 January 2020 and 11 April 2020; of these, 151 occurred in March 2020 alone. This corresponds to a monthly all-cause mortality of 154 deaths per 1,000 person years for March 2020, nearly eleven times the rate recorded for the same month of the previous year (14 deaths per 1,000 person years). The largest increase in mortality recorded during the pandemic was seen among people aged 65 and over, with men disproportionately affected. 14 deaths involved people younger than 65.

“In the light of Nembro’s otherwise extremely stable all-cause mortality figures, the massive increase in mortality seen during March 2020 can only be interpreted as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic”, says the study’s first author, Marco Piccininni, who is a researcher at the IPH. Out of a total of 166 deaths recorded during the pandemic (late February to early April 2020), only 85 had tested positive and were subsequently recorded as deaths from COVID-19. “This represents an enormous discrepancy and shows that the pandemic’s impact on the health of the population was significantly more pronounced than the official COVID-19 death count would suggest,” explains Piccininni. The study’s authors believe there are two main reasons for this discrepancy. Firstly, it is likely that not all infected people were identified as such. This is probably attributable to a shortage of materials needed for testing and the fact that not all suspected cases were tested. Secondly, this could be due to people with non-COVID-related conditions having impaired access to health care, either because health system capacities had been exhausted by COVID-19 cases or because of individuals’ reluctance to visit the hospital for fear of infection.

“If we are to accurately quantify the health impact of the pandemic, we must not rely on confirmed COVID-19 deaths as the sole metric,” emphasizes Prof. Kurth. “To better adapt containment measures to the local situation, consideration should also be given to current data on all-cause mortality from within the relevant region. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to access up-to-date all-cause mortality data. I am pleased that Germany has recently started to make preliminary figures available.”

Piccininni M, Rohmann JL et al.
Use of all cause mortality to quantify the consequences of covid-19 in Nembro, Lombardy: descriptive study.
BMJ 2020, doi: 10.1136/bmj.m1835


VA-SenaMay 20, 2020
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1min44060

AIIMS Bhopal Jobs 2020 – Deputy Medical Superintendent Jobs in Bhopal

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On 11/05/2020, AIIMS Bhopal announced Job notification to hire candidates who completed MS/MD, MHA for the position of Deputy Medical Superintendent.Company Name : AIIMS Bhopal Post Name : Deputy Medical Superintendent No of Posts :2 Posts Salary :Rs. 1,00,000/-Per Month Last Date to Apply :24/05/2020


VA-SenaMay 19, 2020
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1min49870

Consent of destination states not needed: Railways on running migrant trains

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The railways on Tuesday said the consent of the destination states is not required to operate Shramik Special trains, hours after the Home Ministry issued a standard operating procedure for the national transporter to run these trains to ferry migrants to their native places.

“Consent of terminating state not necessary to run Shramik Special trains,” railway spokesperson Rajesh Bajpai said.

“After the new SoP, the implication is that no consent of the receiving state is mandatory,” he said.


VA-SenaMay 19, 2020
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7min44630

WHO: People living longer and healthier lives but COVID-19 threatens to throw progress off track

 

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All over the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing significant loss of life, disrupting livelihoods, and threatening the recent advances in health and progress towards global development goals highlighted in the 2020 World Health Statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO) today.

“The good news is that people around the world are living longer and healthier lives. The bad news is the rate of progress is too slow to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and will be further thrown off track by COVID-19,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

“The pandemic highlights the urgent need for all countries to invest in strong health systems and primary health care, as the best defense against outbreaks like COVID-19, and against the many other health threats that people around the world face every day. Health systems and health security are two sides of the same coin.”

WHO’s World Health Statistics — an annual check-up on the world’s health — reports progress against a series of key health and health service indicators, revealing some important lessons in terms of progress made towards the Sustainable Development Goals and gaps to fill.

Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have increased, but unequally.

The biggest gains were reported in low-income countries, which saw life expectancy rise 21% or 11 years between 2000 and 2016 (compared with an increase of 4% or 3 years in higher income countries).

One driver of progress in lower-income countries was improved access to services to prevent and treat HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, as well as a

number of neglected tropical diseases such as guinea worm. Another was better maternal and child healthcare, which led to a halving of child mortality between 2000 and 2018.

But in a number of areas, progress has been stalling. Immunization coverage has barely increased in recent years, and there are fears that malaria gains may be reversed. And there is an overall shortage of services within and outside the health system to prevent and treat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease, and stroke. In 2016, 71 per cent of all deaths worldwide were attributable to NCDs, with the majority of the 15 million premature deaths (85%) occurring in low and middle-income countries.

This uneven progress broadly mirrors inequalities in access to quality health services. Only between one third and one half the world’s population was able to obtain essential health services in 2017. Service coverage in low- and middle-income countries remains well below coverage in wealthier ones; as do health workforce densities. In more than 40% of all countries, there are fewer than 10 medical doctors per 10 000 people. Over 55% of countries have fewer than 40 nursing and midwifery personnel per 10 000 people.

The inability to pay for healthcare is another major challenge for many. On current trends, WHO estimates that this year, 2020, approximately 1 billion people (almost 13 per cent of the global population) will be spending at least 10% of their household budgets on health care. The majority of these people live in lower middle-income countries.

“The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to protect people from health emergencies, as well as to promote universal health coverage and healthier populations to keep people from needing health services through multisecotral interventions like improving basic hygiene and sanitation,” said Dr Samira Asma, Assistant Director General at WHO.

In 2017, more than half (55%) of the global population was estimated to lack access to safely-managed sanitation services, and more than one quarter (29%) lacked safely-managed drinking water. In the same year, two in five households globally (40%) lacked basic handwashing facilities with soap and water in their home.

The World Health Statistics also highlight the need for stronger data and health information systems. Uneven capacities to collect and use accurate, timely, and comparable health statistics, undermining countries’ ability to understand population health trends, develop appropriate policies, allocate resources and prioritize interventions.

For almost a fifth of countries, over half of the key indicators have no recent primary or direct underlying data, another major challenge in enabling countries to prepare for, prevent and respond to health emergencies such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. WHO is therefore supporting countries in strengthening surveillance and data and health information systems so they can measure their status and manage improvements.

“The message from this report is clear: as the world battles the most serious pandemic in 100 years, just a decade away from the SDG deadline, we must act together to strengthen primary health care and focus on the most vulnerable among us in order to eliminate the gross inequalities that dictate who lives a long, healthy life and who doesn’t,” added Asma. “We will only succeed in doing this by helping countries to improve their data and health information systems.”

Note for editors

The World Health Statistics have been compiled primarily from publications and databases produced and maintained by WHO or by United Nations (UN) groups of which WHO is a member, such as the UN Interagency Group for Child Mortality Estimation. In addition, some statistics have been derived from data produced and maintained by other international organizations, such as the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and its Population Division. The Global Health Observatory database contains additional details about the health-related SDG indicators, as well as interactive visualizations.