ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Padma PrakashSubscribe to Padma Prakash

Where Is the Woman in Preventive and Social Medicine?

Medicine as a body of knowledge has incorporated dominant class, caste and other biases/prejudices and notions. Its view of the human system is contextualised in a hegemonic, patriarchal class society, interpreting and transforming information and insights acquired through scientific investigation into knowledge suitable to the social environment in which it was grounded. Medicine and its practice have influenced the construction of gender roles in society through biologically deterministic arguments. These notions have acquired credibility through their practice in medicine, citation in medical journals and training, and are especially reinforced through research. Textbooks and instructional materials impart values that students imbibe and in course of time integrate into clinical practice and research. This understanding forms a basis for reviewing textbooks in preventive and social medicine, a subdiscipline that aims to ground the understanding and management of disease and medical practice in a social context.

Changing Priorities in Health Care

A reading of the central budget, 1994-95 for health indicates the increasing dissonance in planning for health care and medical research, with the state further shedding its welfare responsibilities.

New Approach to Women s Health Care-Means to an End

New Approach to Women's Health Care Means to an End?
Padma Prakash THE long postponed acknowledgement that reproductive causes

The Making of Bombay-Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions

Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions Padma Prakash The evolution of Bombay's multifaceted socio-cultural identity and its development as India's business capital have been influenced historically by diverse political and economic factors.

Women and Sports-Extending Limits to Physical Expression

Extending Limits to Physical Expression Padma Prakash Every woman athlete today is making a statement against the generations of social discriminations and challenges afresh the myths of women fs physical and therefore, social incompetence and frailty. This article reviews women's attempt to recapture the right to physical expression through sports and examines some of the myths surrounding women's participation in physical activity, especially competitive sports.

Bhopal, Gift-Wrapped

Bhopal: The Lessons of a Tragedy by Sanjoy Hazarika; Penguin Books (India), New Delhi, 1987; pp 230, Rs 60.
IF proof were needed that Bhopal has been relegated to history here it is. Compactly in 200-odd pages Sanjoy Hazarika has lucidly sanitised the disaster so that the horror of that December night and the much worse trauma of the months and years since can be read in the comfort of our drawing rooms. It is certainly not an unfeeling narration

EP Drugs Public Inquiry-Landmark Event Turned into a Charade

In the first judicial order of its kind, the Supreme Court in November 1986 directed the Drugs Controller to conduct a public inquiry to determine whether the sale and manufacture of EP drugs should be banned. Unfortunately, today at the end of the public hearings, there is little reason to believe that the inquiry has been impartial and unbiased or that it has provided adequate opportunity for the public to participate in decision-making.

Battling State, Church and Party

the shariat, writes Ahmed, muslim women have "unfailing right" to maintenance and are guaranteed against destitution. Though Section 125 and the shariat both demand that the liability to maintain the divorced wife is on the husband, if however the husband cannot pay, "then under Section 125 no order of maintenance can be passed against him". But the muslim law guarantees, claims Ahmed, "the wife is entitled to maintenance from her husband in any case

FAMILY PLANNING-Hormonal Methods of Contraception-Government Indifferent to Dangers

Hormonal Methods of Contraception Government Indifferent to Dangers Padma Prakash DESPITE the ongoing world-wide controversy on injectable contraceptives (ICs) the government is blithely going ahead with its plans for introducing ICs into the family planning programme without adequate proof of their safety or even efficacy. ICs are being offered to women through the programme as one of several spacing methods. Moreover, several other long-acting contraceptives are under trial and at least two of these, both hormonal contraceptive implants, are being trial-tested through the programme.

BHOPAL A YEAR AFTER-Neglect of Women s Health Issues

Notes The findings reported in the paper "Animal and Human Response to Methyl Isocyanate" by U C Pojtzani and ER Kinkhead at a seminar at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (May 16-20,1966), and several publications by the same authors, are adopted in the Material Data Sheet No F 43458 A (UCC) which gives detailed instructions on precautions for THE impact of any disaster, 'natural' or industrial, is felt most acutely by the socially and, economically disadvantaged sections of society, among whom are women. Even within this section the pattern of disability probably reflects the relative-vulnerability of the different groups. In Bhopal, for instance, the very young and the very old have undoubtedly suffered the most. But what is not so readily acknowledged is that women due to their historically determined social location have suffered in significantly different ways.

BHOPAL TRAGEDY- Failure of Scientific Community


Note: * Data for components available only upto February 1985.
or so because of a sizeable gap between demand and supply, rose by 14.9 per cent in 1984-85. Production of pulses has remained stagnant around nine to 12 million tonnes and in their case domestic availability cannot be augmented through imports.

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