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Dr Binayak Sen, convicted of sedition, is star Lancet author by Teena Thacker


The seven papers in The Lancet: India Series mentions Dr Binayak Sen; the journal’s January 8-14 issue carries an article by the paediatrician who has been sentenced to life on charges of sedition.

The Lancet calls Sen a world renowned public health physician, rights activist and civil liberties expert who has worked tirelessly over the years to protect the human rights of vulnerable people, including health as a human right.

The Lancet editor Richard Horton said, “One notable absentee from the launch (of the India Series) is paediatrician and comment author Binayak Sen.”

In the article, “Securing the right to health for all in India”, Sen writes about inequities in delivering health services. “The huge inequity is evident here, on the one hand, in flourishing international medical tourism, and high-technology biomedical interventions done cheaply, and, on the other, minimum levels of healthcare being unavailable to those unable to pay.”

Since the early 1990s when the process of economic reforms began, Sen writes, “the yearly per head consumption of food grains in the country has drastically deteriorated. The latest National Family Health Survey (2005-06) provided grim evidence of very slow improvement in infant mortality, persistently low rates of child immunisation, and shocking rates of malnutrition.”

The article seems to have been written recently, for it mentions the National Health Bill (2009). “The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian chapter of the People’s Health Movement, had a major role in lobbying for and preparing the grounds for the draft bill, which for the first time addresses questions of equitable entitlements to essential health facilities, goods, drugs, services, and conditions for all, especially vulnerable and marginalised groups.”

The final irony, he writes, is that any recourse to public action and public finance is necessarily to be based on the commitment of the state to the welfare of its citizens. “In India today, such an assumption does not always appear tenable,” he says.

Yet Sen sees hope. “Important changes have already occurred in the Indian scenario... including a stronger public distribution system, laws about right to information, employment guarantees, and rights in forest areas. It is in these resources that the people of India must seek relief from their current impasse.