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Includes index. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; v. 4. Communicable diseases transmitted chiefly through respiratory and alimentary tracts -- v. 5. Communicable disease transmitted through contact or by unknown means -- v. 6. Malaria -- v. 7. Anthropodbourne diseases other than malaria. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Indian medical heritage flows in two distinctive but mutually complimenting streams. The oral tradition being followed by millions of housewives and thousands of local health practitioners is the practical aspect of codified streams such as Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani. These oral traditions are head based and take care of the basic health needs of the people using immediately available local resources. Majority of these are plant based remedies, supplemented by animal and mineral products. Many of the practices followed by these local streams can be understood and evaluated by the codified stream such as Ayurveda. These streams are not static, historical scrutiny of their evolution shows the enriching phenomena at all times. Thus we have more than 7000 species of higher and lower plants and hundreds of minerals and animal product used in local health tradition to manage hundreds of disease conditions. A pertinent question that arises here is that in which basis these systems got enriched. Is it just trial error method over a point of time which gave rise to this rich tradition, is it an intuitive knowledge born out of close association with nature. One of the reasons for this attitude can be, that one is always made to believe that the science means that which can be explained by western models of logic and epistemology. The world view being developed and adopted by the dominant western scientific paradigm never fits in to the world view being followed and practiced by the indigenous traditions. This is well accepted by us due to the last 200 yrs of political and cultural domination by western and other alien forces.

Indian medical heritage flows in two distinctive but mutually complimenting streams. The oral tradition being followed by millions of housewives and thousands of local health practitioners is the practical aspect of codified streams such as Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani. These oral traditions are head based and take care of the basic health needs of the people using immediately available local resources. Majority of these are plant based remedies, supplemented by animal and mineral products. Many of the practices followed by these local streams can be understood and evaluated by the codified stream such as Ayurveda. These streams are not static, historical scrutiny of their evolution shows the enriching phenomena at all times. Thus we have more than 7000 species of higher and lower plants and hundreds of minerals and animal product used in local health tradition to manage hundreds of disease conditions. A pertinent question that arises here is that in which basis these systems got enriched. Is it just trial error method over a point of time which gave rise to this rich tradition, is it an intuitive knowledge born out of close association with nature. One of the reasons for this attitude can be, that one is always made to believe that the science means that which can be explained by western models of logic and epistemology. The world view being developed and adopted by the dominant western scientific paradigm never fits in to the world view being followed and practiced by the indigenous traditions. This is well accepted by us due to the last 200 yrs of political and cultural domination by western and other alien forces.

Abstract.  Communicable diseases pose a formidable challenge for public policy. Using numerical simulations, we show under which scenarios a monopolist's price and prevalence paths converge to a non‐zero steady state. In contrast, a planner typically eradicates the disease. If eradication is impossible, the planner subsidizes treatments as long as the prevalence can be controlled. Drug resistance exacerbates the welfare difference between monopoly and first best outcomes. Nevertheless, because the negative externalities from resistance compete with the positive externalities of treatment, a mixed competition/monopoly regime may perform better than competition alone. This result has important implications for the design of many drug patents.

This last decade, regional organizations progressively became
unavoidable actors of regional health governance and have been supported by some global health actors to strengthen such a role. Among these actors, the European Union (EU) is the only regional organization that implements health initiatives in cooperation with its regional counterparts. This article focuses on such "health interregionalism" toward Southeast Asia and Africa and in the field of communicable diseases, with the main objective of assessing its nature and identifying its main functions. It concludes that although appreciated and needed, the EU's health interregionalism should better reflect the EU's experience in regional health governance in order to represent a unique instrument of development aid and an added value for regional organizations

Although the traditional biosecurity paradigm is concerned with the deliberate misuse of biological agents, in recent years national security strategies have widened in scope to address a much wider spectrum of biological threats. This expanding remit, partly spurred by the high-profile epidemics of the early 2000s, still does not include conditions that have been traditionally conceived as non-infectious. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, and chronic respiratory diseases, are together responsible for 70 per cent of deaths worldwide. Heart disease and cancer have long been the leading causes of death in high-income countries but the increasing availability of tobacco, alcohol, processed food and western lifestyles have led to a boom in deaths from NCDs in low-income settings over recent decades. The substantial socio-economic burden levied by NCDs can undermine political stability in fragile states by straining weak health systems and exacerbating social inequalities. This review article argues that the rise of NCDs is a threat to international security, and that departments of defence have a central role to play in the prevention and control of these diseases. NCDs compromise the integrity of standing armies, incur large military opportunity costs, threaten the health of domestic populations, restrict economic growth in the developing world, stoke socioeconomic inequalities and seed social unrest in fragile states. Greater defence spending on domestic and international efforts to promote health and manage NCDs should be a core function of defence departments mandated to promote global security.

Collaboration occurs in many fields and is used as a 'buzz word' that can contextually mean different things. Research collaboration occurs primarily in the form of 'researchers working together on a common research problem or activity' (Rand, 1998: 11). Collaborative research continues to be an increasing phenomenon and there are higher levels of collaboration in the area of health and basic research. Research into communicable diseases is important because they are the second leading cause of death worldwide and have global impact. HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and malaria are the 'killer three' communicable diseases, together resulting in about 6 million deaths each year. Without further research these figures are likely to continue to increase. Identifying 'best practice' for research in this area is also important if Millennium Development Goal 6 'to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases' is to be met. Research in communicable disease can be conducted either collaboratively, such as with joint resources or shared data, or non-collaboratively. As such, evaluating the nature and outcomes of research collaboration, and the form in which research is conducted in communicable disease, is important. This study identifies seven benefits and five costs of formal research collaboration . Benefits include to (1) increase access to data, knowledge and resources; (2) increase understanding of research problems; (3) enable access to facilities, equipment and laboratories; (4) enable flow of knowledge between researchers; (5) prevent duplication ; (6) strengthen research capacity, especially relevant with vertical collaboration such as between developed and developing countries; and (7) increase access to funding. Costs identified include (1) additional expenses; (2) additional time costs; (3) additional administration costs; (4) potentially unbalanced roles; and (5) priority diversion. Evaluation of whether research should be collaborative should be based on objectives of the research project. These objectives for research in HIV/AIDS , TB and malaria are broadly broken down into six areas including: to develop effective drugs, to develop vaccines, to increase understanding of the disease, to improve diagnostics, to establish surveillance, and to create new and innovative technologies. The scale and scope of these research problems and objectives is so vast that it can motivate research collaboration. An analysis of five case studies of research collaboration in HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria research, primarily funded through the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) demonstrates the benefits of research collaboration. Each illustrates that collaboration can result in increased access to knowledge and data. The BioMalPar project for example held conferences on an annual basis to facilitate access to knowledge and data to meet its objectives successfully. The CASCADE collaborative project, a consortium between 11 European countries, Canada and Australia, was able to conduct research that would be impossible without such levels of involvement. This demonstrates that collaboration can effectively address issues that cannot be reliably addressed by individual studies or non-collaborative projects alone. However an unforeseen cost of collaboration emerges: that collaboration does not necessarily result in a quicker completion of projects. The European Union's Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development (FP6) has allocated substantial funding for collaborative research projects in areas such as communicable disease. The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and United States National institutes of Health (NIH) have also more than doubled funding for research in HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria within the past ten years. Although not directly funding research, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) also provides incentive for research in these diseases through its purchasing power. Despite this, the '90-10 gap', whereby 90 percent of the world's funding for health research is spent on 10 percent of the world's health problems, continues to prevail. To address this gap, funding needs to be allocated to 'best practice' methods of research. Vast amounts of funds are dedicated to research in the form of collaborative activities, without necessarily defining what level and types of activities these entail. Funding structures and levels also differ substantially between countries, institutions and Public-Private Partnerships and are commonly unspecified and complex. In this regard, collaborative research often receives vast amounts of funding without necessarily having structures in place to evaluate the projects, the effects, results or benefits of the collaboration. This is evident for example with Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) collaborative grants. The immense number of institutions, organisations and trusts involved in promoting research in this area makes it difficult to systematise information regarding research collaboration. In general, there are scientific, economic, and political benefits to be gained through international research collaboration, including additional access to resources, knowledge, establishing greater research capacity, and enabling nations to pool funds in order to address issues of global concern. Communicable disease such as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria are certainly diseases of global concern, which is why a more structured or systematic approach to identify levels and types of collaboration in these diseases would be beneficial. Direct and indirect benefits of research collaboration also exist which indicate that there are several important advantages of research collaboration. Ultimately however, in order to assess whether projects should be collaborative, the costs and benefits of collaboration should be evaluated. importantly, the research objectives of a particular project should be taken into account. On the basis of this study it is concluded that research into communicable disease such as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and not be exclusively collaborative. Recommendations: • The costs and benefits of collaboration and the research objectives of a project should be taken into account when determining if research should be conducted collaboratively. • Funding organisations and bodies should have a structured approach to policies regarding international collaboration and clarify what kinds of collaborations are funded, and the reasons as to why projects are collaborative. • There needs to be more research conducted in this area that includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis which assesses if collaboration produces improved results.