Research News

A partner of the DFID-funded Effective Health Care Research Programme Consortium (HD7) - the South Asian Cochrane Network - recently hosted Norman Swan, a multi-award winning journalist from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, at its symposium on Evidence Based Health Care, in Vellore, India. As well as delivering a keynote address and workshop on evidence-informed health care and the media, Norman interviewed researchers and clinicians for his weekly thirty minute radio show on ABC Radio National - The Health Report - resulting in two well researched and topical reports on the ethics of drug trials in India and mental health research. These were aired in early February 2010. Click here to listen to the programmes, download podcasts or read the transcripts.

The first of the two reports – 'Mental Health Research from Southern India' covers the fascinating work of Anna Tharyan, Professor in Psychiatry at the Christian Medical College (CMC) who has taken her ward rounds onto the streets of the city of Vellore. The second half of the report interviews Prathap Tharyan (also a Professor of Psychiatry at CMC) and Dr. Clive Adams (founder of the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group and Chair of Mental Health Services Research in the University of Nottingham). Both Tharyan and Adams recount research trials undertaken in India and Brazil on treating people with serious mental illness. The trials were carried out to a very high standard, independently of the pharmaceutical industry, for the cost of a few hundred dollars.

Tharyan then goes on to discuss the very real contribution that a Cochrane systematic review made to the way counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder was carried out in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami on the east coast of Tamil Nadu, India.

In the second report, Drug trials undertaken in India and the reporting of medical trials Swan interviews Dr Amar Jesani , founder of the Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights in Mumbai , Dr. Raju Chacko, a cancer specialist at the Christian Medical College in Vellore and Professor Doug Altman, Director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Statistics in Medicine. This hard hitting report discusses the ever growing practice of pharmaceutical companies conducting trials of medications in countries such as India and the reasons why. Jesani and Chacko sound warnings about weak or non-existent ethical controls in India and Altman discusses deficiencies in results from trials conducted in Western countries.

More information

See the programme website and project record on R4D for the Effective Health Care Research Programme Consortium (EHCRPC)