Spiralling prices of pulses have shown India’s dependence on imports. Pulses are integral to India’s diet but not its food policy. As a result, supply cannot meet demand. What are the consequences and solutions? Surendra Nath has switched to eating grass-pea, though he knows it is not good for health. But so is tobacco, he argues. He cannot do without pulses and pigeon-pea selling at Rs 100 a kg is beyond...

Four-year course, including internship, proposed; it would be “institutional” in character  The annual proposed intake for the course is 25 to 50 students Medical Council of India plans to start the course in August The proposed alternative model for under-graduate medical education to create a cadre of rural doctors will be discussed at a two-day workshop beginning here this Thursday. The model, mooted by the Medical Council of India (MCI), is to...

India’s largest association of doctors and the country’s apex regulator of medical education appear poised for confrontation over a government proposal to create a new cadre of healthcare providers for rural areas. The Union health ministry has announced a plan to create a group of health practitioners who could diagnose and treat common illnesses and injuries and prescribe medicines to patients in rural areas plagued by shortages of doctors. The health ministry...

This is what a prescription confiscated recently in a Madhya Pradesh primary healthcare centre read — "Above prescribed medicines are available in the medical store situated just outside the hospital." In a blatant example of the doctor-pharmaceutical company nexus that is not only plaguing Indian cities but also the country's most backward villages, the latest review of the National Rural Health Mission has found that the prescription pad was a...

Unauthorized medical practitioners find business where Bihar’s health machinery deserts polio victims Two-year-old Khushi Kumari loves racing with her siblings and at the end of each run she gives out a hearty laugh. The only time she breaks into fits of inconsolable crying is when approached by a stranger. “She fears she would get injections again,” said her mother Dinapati Yadav of Haldichapra village in Patna district. “In September last year...