Steam Center Blog

Good health is central to human happiness.   A Human may be a happy human without much wealth but he cannot be a happy without good health.   There is the old saying - where there is health there is hope. Because of this, Health care must remain a central subject of healthcare policy of governments. Recently, this author has contributed many of his thoughts on the topic to leadership of US and India on twitter where this policy is under active debate and transformation. However, twitter, because of its brevity and informality cannot explain points fully. This note shall attempt to do that. A blog note also has a wider and more durable presence for the world at large and all do need to devote their attention to this topic some of the time, so central it is to life. Ranking Countries by Healthcare Outcomes Several different ways and methods exist to rank countries of the world on healthcare but the simplest is infant under five mortality rates in a country. It is ...

A dulteration of food by substances dangerous to life is a fact in many parts of the world including India. Consumers have to be careful in ensuring that food they procure from markets is safe for their health and their families. Food safety inspectors exist in health departments of all countries to check food products and punish unscrupulous food sellers. In India however there is a unique dimension to this inspection that hovers between the irrational and sordid corruption that plays with the health and well being of citizens. Let us first explain what the irrational element is. On October 15 there was a report in the times of India, the prominent daily newspapers that in a village in Chomu district of India, food inspectors from the health department had unearthed a mawa (a concentrated milk product used in many Indian sweet dishes) unit that was preparing it from milk powder and edible vegetable oil products instead of just pure milk ( see here ). They destroyed 120 kg...

Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_day_in_the_rural_life_in_India_2013.jpg Silver in Pot (SIP) Method I nfant mortality rates are some of the highest in India and other south Asian countries and a major cause of this is polluted water primarily for drinking and some for washing hands before meals, mouth wash, washing fruits and vegetables that are eaten raw. With increasing population, pollution of water bodies has increased. Use of outdoors as toilets has increased such pollution. As a result drinking water has become less than healthy in most areas. While the rich are able to use expensive devices to purify the water, the poor manage without any. For some, even boiling and cooling water for drinking is too expensive or too time consuming. The result is that health of all suffers and when it comes to the most vulnerable – infants and children - many die as a result of it. While an effort is needed on many fronts to improve the quality of wat...

The Septic Drain T hose who live in developed countries may be surprised to learn that a large part of the human population lives without a toilet. Put crudely they simply piss and shit out in the open. In India it is estimated that half the population does that. This is all the more tragic in a country that invented toilets, bathrooms and covered drains five thousand years ago in the Indus Valley civilization ( http://alienaccount.blogspot.in/2013/09/indus-valley-and-atlantis.html ). Since then though, a lot of piss and water has passed under the bridge with a slide into poverty and decay. Aside from the inconvenience of having to run out into the fields every now and then, the phenomenon of open defecation poses some serious issues that have only increased with an increase of population density on the planet. First are health issues. When it rains the waste is washed into drains, rivulets, rivers, ponds and lakes. Water sources are then charged with disease causing bac...