Biomedical publications in south Asian countries.

By and large, biomedical research is not a priority sector in south Asian countries, land of world's one-fifth population. The total number of studies published during 1990-98 from each of the south Asian countries were elicited based on MEDLINE database. The number of studies were normalised by population and physician size, and gross domestic products. The results showed that the following countries are more productive: India and Sri Lanka, when publications were normalised to population; India, Sri Lanka and Nepal when normalised to GDP; Nepal and Sri Lanka when normalised to physician number.