Kaushik Bharati

• PhD MIPHA FRSPH (London)
• UNESCO

Cholera has been for many centuries a permanent feature of life in the slums and poverty-stricken villages in India, particularly in the eastern regions of the country. In this region outbreaks have occurred frequently since the early 1800s1. The first six cholera pandemics originated from this geographical region while the seventh and ongoing pand...

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused havoc across the world over the past three years. The elderly people suffered the most during this unprecedented global public health calamity. The degree of suffering was magnified many fold in the elderly and frail individuals. They experienced atypical clinical disease presentation and...

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a tremendous negative impact on the health systems of all countries worldwide. Medical services had been halted due to disrupted supply chains, arising from the havoc wreaked by the pandemic. Essential life-saving medicines couldn’t reach the patients who needed them most. Moreover, there was...

Pandemics of gigantic proportions have afflicted humanity since antiquity. Various types of viruses, bacteria and other deadly pathogens have decimated populations across the globe over millennia. Bubonic plague is one such scourge that terrified millions of people once-upon-a-time. Many of the pandemics have died away over time, but some still per...

The COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, China, has spread across the world and has wreaked havoc the globe. It hasbeen ongoing for over two years and has killed over 6 million people! Several interventions are available for tackling the virus. Theseinclude drugs such as dexamethasone for treating severe and critical patients, as well as p...

Chikungunya (CHIK) is a mosquito-borne viral disease that is spread by the bite of Aedes mosquitoes. It is caused by the chikungunya virus (CHIKV). The disease was first reported from Tanzania in 1952. Since then, outbreaks have been reported from many parts of the globe. The first Indian outbreak was reported in 1963 from Kolkata, followed by othe...

The Indian biotherapeutics industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It encompasses various aspects of therapeutic approaches, including drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, medical technologies etc. The present review gives a 'flavor' of the subject by giving a snapshot of the subject and by providing snippets from the vast milieu of the 'canvas' of b...

This chapter highlights the cholera situation in South Asia and the Bay of Bengal region, the original 'homeland' of cholera. A detailed discussion of cholera outbreaks in individual countries in South-East Asia follows. The countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) SEARO (South-East Asia Region) region are discussed first, followed by discu...

Cervical cancer is the most common form of cancer in Indian women, causing high morbidity and mortality. Two effective and safe vaccines exist, but these remain out of reach of most people due to their high cost. It is imperative that an Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine be affordable and cheap so that the target population can be vaccinated, to m...

Malaria is largely neglected in the South-East Asia Region (SEAR), although it has the highest number of people susceptible to the disease. Malaria in the SEAR exhibits special epidemiological characteristics such as "forest malaria" and malaria due to migration across international borders. The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) has been a focal-point...

INTRODUCTION: There have been massive outbreaks of Chikungunya fever in recent years in the South-East Asian region [1] . The frequency and severity of these out-breaks highlight the need to characterize and understand the biology of Chikungunya virus CHIKV isolates. CHIKV is an alphavirus and belongs to

Viruses cause a large number of diseases in humans, some of which are fatal, while others are highly debilitating. A majority of viral diseases attack infants and young children, while others strike people in their prime. Development of preventive measures against viral diseases is, therefore, of paramount importance. Vaccination is the most cost-e...

Cholera toxin (CT) was discovered exactly half a century ago by S.N. De. We have come a long way since this epoch-making discovery. Retrospectively, science had to wait a long time since Koch's prediction of the existence of a toxin, and its actual discovery by De. CT is not just another enterotoxin that causes the signs and symptoms of the dreaded...

Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) is the most important cause of viral encephalitis commonly known as "brain fever". It appears in the form of frequent epidemics throughout Southeast Asia. China. India and the Asia-Pacific belt The disease is caused by a flavivirus named Japanese encephalitis virus that is spread to humans hy the bite of infected C...

We have previously described DNA vaccine candidates against Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) that were immunogenic in mice. Present study was conducted to evaluate their immunogenicity in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and compare it with the commercial mouse brain-derived, formalin-inactivated vaccine. Groups of four monkeys were immunized with...

Domain III of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) envelope protein (E-DIII) was synthesized in E. coli as a fusion protein containing maltose-binding protein (MBP-E-DIII) or six contiguous histidine residues (His-E-DIII) at its N-terminus. MBP-E-DIII was found both in the soluble as well as the insoluble fraction of the bacterial lysate, while His-E-...

Japanese encephalitis (JE) is the most common form of viral encephalitis that appears in the form of frequent epidemics of brain fever throughout Southeast Asia, China and India. The disease is caused by a Flavivirus named Japanese encephalitis virus that is spread to humans by mosquitoes. An internationally approved mouse brain-derived inactivated...

We have previously shown that immunization of mice with plasmid pMEa synthesizing Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) envelope protein induced anti-JEV humoral and cellular immune responses. We now show that intra-muscular co-administration of mice with pMEa and pGM-CSF, encoding murine granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor or pIL-2, encod...

Envenoming by Echis saw scaled vipers and Bitis arietans puff adders is the leading cause of death and morbidity in Africa due to snake bite. Despite their medical importance, the composition and constituent functionality of venoms from these vipers remains poorly understood. Here, we report the cloning of cDNA sequences encoding seven clusters or...

Venom toxin-specific antibodies offer a more rational treatment of snake envenoming than conventional antivenom. Here, we describe novel cDNAs encoding phospholipase A 2 (PLA 2) isoforms from venom gland RNA of Echis pyramidum leakeyi (Epl), Echis sochureki (Es) and Echis ocellatus (Eo). The deduced amino acid sequences of these cDNAs encoded prote...