Mental healthcare speaks an idiom unfamiliar to patients. A major conference calls for a radical rethink, reports DR RAKHAL GAITONDE. 

THERE ARE three types of visitors to Kovalam, a bustling village about 12 kilometres from Mahabalipuram on the East Coast Road towards Chennai. Schoolchildren from the surrounding villages are the noisiest lot, followed by the tourists and the scores of people coming to visit the local dargah that is famous for its faith healers. The setting couldn’t have been more appropriate for the recently held conference ‘Mental Health at the Margins’, organised by The Banyan, a local NGO that works with the homeless mentally ill, in collaboration with the University College of London. The conference had the overall objective of evolving “a broad definition and understanding of theory and practice related to mental health and marginality from both Western and South Asian perspective.”

Worse is happening to medical ethics than a 15-year-old being allowed to operate. Doctors and the pharma industry are flagrantly violating patients’ rights

RAKHAL GAITONDE

RAKHAL GAITONDE

Based on the Report of the Task Force on Health & Family Welfare, April 2001 and amended as per the Proceedings of the Workshop organized by the Directorate of Health and Family Welfare Services, Government of Karnataka on October 4, 2001 and subsequent meetings held under the Chairmanship of the Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, on 20-9-2002, 13-12-2002 and 09-01-2003.

Download the report here (pdf)
 

Ethics Committee in National Tuberculosis Institute

As a member of the Ethics Committee of the National Tuberculosis Institute (NTI), Dr. Thelma attended several meetings in NTI.

Dorabji Tata Symposium on Arboviruses

Dr. Ravi also attended the Dorabji Tata Symposium on Arboviruses and presented a special paper entitled ‘Health, Development, Agriculture, Environment: New linkages and new paradigm’ in the final panel discussion which was very well received.