Chennai: Making a strong case for improving hygiene and sanitation in the country, Noble laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan pointed out on Thursday that the West had been able to get rid of many diseases and infections by making hygiene a priority in every day life.
Delivering a lecture in the city on ‘anti-body and ribosome,’ the Indian born British-American scientist, who was awarded a Noble prize in Chemistry for unravelling the structure of ribosome, which is primarily responsible for synthesis of protein, said use of antibiotics was not enough to fight disease and India must learn from the West in battling it more effectively.
Regretting that the government’s expenditure on health was the third lowest in the world after Haiti and Sierra Leone, he called for more investment in sanitation and hygiene in the country. “Europe has the best sanitation,” he noted, while underlining that a disease prevention mechanism and surveillance was extremely crucial to keep the people of India healthy.
The molecular biologist warned that the habit of taking antibiotics, common among many people in the country, could lead to increased drug resistant bacteria and viruses in the long run. “This attitude of self- medication is not healthy,” he stressed.
“Often people do not complete the full course of their medication thinking they have been cured , but the residual bacteria in the body develops resistance and bec-omes stronger this way,” he explained.
As for crystallography , a field in which he has won the Noble, the scientist said, “There is a lot of scope for structural biological research. There are still unanswered questions on how some bacteria are able to evade vaccines and how they attack the hosts.”
