Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV)
Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV): ________ CCTV pictures showing Al Qaeda’s terrorists Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari boarding a 6:00 a.m. flight from Portland to Boston’s Logan International Airport on September 11, 2001. _____ CCTV footages of 2015: _______ Prologue: In the past people didn’t misbehave because they thought God was watching them. Today we’ve replaced an all-seeing God with the glassy eye of the CCTV camera. A CCTV camera can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year without a toilet break or lunch. It does not need a holiday, maternity leave and rarely goes sick. There were 25 million CCTV cameras in operation worldwide, with 2.5 million in the UK in 2002 but today the figure is doubled. Practically every major city now boasts a CCTV system aimed at, among other things, preventing, detecting and reducing crime. Increasingly these developments are mirrored in villages, […]
EBOLA
EBOLA: ________ _______ Prologue: The most dangerous outbreak of an emerging infectious disease since the appearance of HIV seems to have begun on December 6, 2013, in the village of Meliandou, in Guinea, in West Africa, with the death of a two-year-old boy who was suffering from diarrhea and a fever. We now know that he was infected with Ebola virus. After Ebola infected the boy, it went from him to his mother, who died, to his three-year-old sister, who died, and to their grandmother, who died, and then it left the village and began moving through the human population of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Ebola virus is one of a group of zoonotic viruses that can cause severe disease in humans. The virus is known as a “zoonotic” virus because it’s transmitted to humans from animals. With pressures from a growing global population, climate change, deforestation, urbanization […]
SELF MONITORING (MEASUREMENT) OF BLOOD GLUCOSE (SMBG)
_______ SELF MONITORING (MEASUREMENT) OF BLOOD GLUCOSE (SMBG): _______ _______ Prologue: Way back in 1991, on a Sunday afternoon, a young Parsi lady from Mumbai who was holidaying in a nearby village came to me with sudden breathlessness at my nursing home at Vapi, 160 km north of Mumbai. Clinical examination was normal except severe breathlessness. I suspected diabetic ketoacidosis and asked about history of diabetes. Patient and her relatives flatly denied any history of diabetes and told me that she was investigated in Mumbai for weakness recently and there is no diabetes. In those days, glucometer was not available in India. We used to blood sugar by Folin-Wu method. Being Sunday, laboratory was closed, so I could not do blood and urine sugar. I believed the story of relatives, ignored my gut feeling of diabetes, did ECG and X-ray chest which were normal, gave some primary care and sent […]
SELF MEASUREMENT OF BLOOD PRESSURE (SMBP):
SELF MEASUREMENT OF BLOOD PRESSURE (SMBP): ________ The figure above shows correct way to measure blood pressure at home. _______ Prologue: When the heart beats it generates a pressure in the arteries to pump blood around the body. In some people, the pressure generated is too high and this is called hypertension. Way back in 1981, Dr. R. C. Hansoti was head of cardiology department in Nair hospital, Mumbai and he was taking a clinic on hypertension for a group of medical students and I was one of the medical student attending his clinic. He asked a question to everybody: What are the symptoms of hypertension? Some said headache, some said giddiness and some said palpitation. When my turn came, I said hypertension has no symptoms. Dr. Hansoti was satisfied with my answer. He said that there is only one wise doctor among the crowd. I felt elated. Even today, I […]
GENE THERAPY
_______ GENE THERAPY: ______ ______ Caveat: Medicine is an ever-changing science. As new research and clinical experience broaden our knowledge, changes in treatment and drug therapy are required. I have checked with sources believed to be reliable in their efforts to provide information that is complete and generally in accord with the standards accepted at the time of publishing this article. However, in view of the possibility of human error or changes in medical sciences, I do not assure that the information contained herein is in every respect accurate or complete, and I disclaim all responsibility for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from use of the information contained in this work. Readers are encouraged to confirm the information contained herein with other sources. I have taken some information from articles that were published few years ago. The facts and conclusions presented may have since changed and […]
