Indian Pediatrics 2001; 38: 936-937  

News in Brief

Drug Watch
Fake formulations: Artesunate is life saving in many parts of South East Asia in the therapy of resistant malaria. But a recent study’s shocking results shows that up to 38% of artesunate bought from drug shops and pharmacies are fake. Samples were taken from shops in Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and western Thailand. They were tested using the dye test based on the reaction between an alkali-decomposition product of artesunate and the diazonium salt, Fast Red TR. The physical appearance and packaging of the drug was also noted. Simple things like absence of the genuine hologram on the packaging, lack of bitter taste and lack of a logo on both sides of the tablet were equally effective in predicting the fake. The fight against malaria seems to be getting more complicated all the time (eBMJ 23 June 2001).

Policy
Of Flour and Folic Acid: It is well established that periconceptional folic acid significantly reduces neural tube defects. But babies are often unplanned and many women fail to take folic acid around conception. In 1998, it was made compulsory in the USA to add 140 grams of folic acid to every 100 grams of flour. The result is a 20% decline in neural tube defects since fortification. Margaret Honein and colleagues from the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities in Atlanta, Georgia, studied birth certificate data in the years before and after the fortification and ruled that all grain products should be fortified with folic acid (JAMA 2001;285:2981-6). The number of neural tube defects that were reported on birth certificates fell from 37.8 per 100000 live births before fortification to 30.5 per 100000 live births after fortification, representing a 19% decline. The prevalence of spina bifida fell by 23% from 26.2 per 100000 births to 20.2 per 100000 births. Anencephaly decreased by 11% from 11.6 per 100000 births to 10.3 per 100000 births. Scientists in the UK feel that perhaps higher doses of folic acid may reduce the risk further.

Gender Issues
Winning over women: A report compiled by the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians has advised that more flexible and part time jobs must be made available to be able to retain women doctors in the work force and allow them to achieve their full potentials. In the report it was noted that while in the UK more than 50% of graduates from medical school are women, they are thinly represented when it comes to academic posts, acute care specialties and senior hospital posts. The report stresses that appointing two people part time for one job may actually improve productivity and help in maintaining continued contributions from women in the field of medicine. More and more women are opting for part time jobs to be able to balance family and profession. Pediatricians who understand the critical role of the mother in shaping a child’s development would surely root for this change (eBMJ 30 June 2001).

Gouri Rao Passi,
Consultant, Department of Pediatrics,
Choithram Hospital and Research Center,
Indore 452 001, India.
E-mail: [email protected]

Pedscapes

Amedeo: The medical literature guide – http://amedeo.com/index.htm Amedeo is a free service that provides the latest articles to your mailbox every week. Subscribers require registering and choosing from a list over 80 topics and specialties. They also have to choose from a list of journals in the given topics. The bibliographic lists of recently added articles are sent weekly by email. Abstracts of these articles can be accessed from personal web pages created for the subscriber. Moreover, relevant medical litera-ture in last 24 months is also available from the web pages. Though pediatrics as a section is not presently listed, Pediatricians can choose the neonatology section and from the various subspecialties and diseases.

Pedscapes Collection - http://imavja.20m. com/LinksPed.htm A collection of all the websites that have appeared in this column in the last three years since its inception has been hosted on the website of Indian Medical Association, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. The collection can be accessed from the links section of the website. The collection has been classified alphabetically and has been made possible because of the efforts of Dr. C.S.N. Vittal, an eminent pediatrician from Vijaya-wada. The collection has been updated with the bad links corrected and will serve as a useful directory of pediatric websites.

NOAH - New York Online Access to Health - www.noah-health.org/english/toclist.html This is a project brought about by the City University of New York, The New York Public Library among others with an aim to provide free, high quality full-text health information. The website contains updated and well-illustrated information on various diseases including information on counseling and patient support groups. The diseases are arranged alphabetically and a search facility has also been provided. Among the collec-tions, the child neurology and genetics sections are the most exhaustive.

Emergency Clinical Guide - www.anisman. co/ecg/index.htm This site is meant for providing concise information to residents on various topics in emergency medicine. The site has been hosted by a resident in internal medicine from the University of Vermont. The site has the following sections – clinical approaches to various disorders, data inter-pretation techniques including blood gases and pulmonary function tests, skills in clinical examination, clinical conditions. A survival section contains links, eponyms, mnemonics and medical calculators. A collection of ECGs has also been provided.

Frontiers in Fetal Health - www.sickkids. on.ca/FrontiersInFetalHealth/ This monthly, international publication covers aspects of prenatal diagnosis of birth defects, their in-utero amelioration, postnatal diagnosis and prevention of birth defects. The journal is published by the Fetal Center of the Hospital for Sick Children, Ontario, Canada. The full text of this is available online and can be accessed free of charge. The articles are avail-able in both html and .pdf formats.

Full text of BMJ group journals now free - The full text of all the articles of all the BMJ publishing group journals including the Archives of Diseases in Childhood are now available free for developing countries including India. They can be accessed from the journal websites or from www.bmjpg.com

C. Vidyashankar,
Pediatrician,
Military Hospital, Namkum,
Ranchi 834 010, Jharkhand,
India.
E-mail: [email protected]