Evidence-based National Vaccine Policy.

India has over a century old tradition of development and production of vaccines. The Government rightly adopted self-sufficiency in vaccine production and self-reliance in vaccine technology as its policy objectives in 1986. However, in the absence of a full-fledged vaccine policy, there have been concerns related to demand and supply, manufacture vs. import, role of public and private sectors, choice of vaccines, new and combination vaccines, universal vs. selective vaccination, routine immunization vs. special drives, cost-benefit aspects, regulatory issues, logistics etc. The need for a comprehensive and evidence based vaccine policy that enables informed decisions on all these aspects from the public health point of view brought together doctors, scientists, policy analysts, lawyers and civil society representatives to formulate this policy paper for the consideration of the Government. This paper evolved out of the first ever ICMR-NISTADS national brainstorming workshop on vaccine policy held during 4-5 June, 2009 in New Delhi, and subsequent discussions over email for several weeks, before being adopted unanimously in the present form.

Various epileptic seizure detection techniques using biomedical signals: a review.

Epilepsy is a chronic chaos of the central nervous system that influences individual's daily life by putting it at risk due to repeated seizures. Epilepsy affects more than 2% people worldwide of which developing countries are affected worse. A seizure is a transient irregularity in the brain's electrical activity that produces disturbing physical symptoms such as a lapse in attention and memory, a sensory illusion, etc. Approximately one out of every three patients have frequent seizures, despite treatment with multiple anti-epileptic drugs. According to a survey, population aged 65 or above in European Union is predicted to rise from 16.4% (2004) to 29.9% (2050) and also this tremendous increase in aged population is also predicted for other countries by 2050. In this paper, seizure detection techniques are classified as time, frequency, wavelet (time-frequency), empirical mode decomposition and rational function techniques. The aim of this review paper is to present state-of-the-art methods and ideas that will lead to valid future research direction in the field of seizure detection.

Accuracy of the National Polio Surveillance Project data in Rajasthan.

According to the National Polio Surveillance Project (NPSP) there were 15 polio cases in Rajasthan during 2000. Close scrutiny of the Line List of AFP cases shows that there were at least 58 polio cases, many cases had been wrongly classified. Cases of vaccine associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) and vaccine failure had been missed.