-The Times of India MUMBAI: Certain medicines are being aggressively marketed in India despite inadequate evidence of safety and efficacy, putting patients at risk, said reputed medical journal Lancet. Highlighting weak regulation and monitoring of the domestic drug industry, three recently-introduced medicines are being prescribed and sold though there is a lack of rigorous trials on crucial safety and efficacy parameters. The pharmaceutical industry in India should face the same stringent regulations...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Dengue figures in the Capital may have been grossly under-reported, shows an analysis of data from various hospitals. Eight government hospitals have reported 13 deaths as on Saturday, but the municipal corporations have confirmed just five. Data from the civic bodies, which collate information from all private and government hospitals, clinics and nursing homes across the Capital, confirms just 1,872 dengue cases. This figure seems grossly low as data...

-The New Indian Express The recent socio-economic and caste census (SECC) 2011 data on deprivations is profoundly disquieting. At the global level too, the latest data on economic inequality is equally disconcerting. That 75 per cent of rural households in India earn less than Rs 5,000 per month or around Rs 33 per capita per day and that over 40 per cent are landless and work as manual casual labourers even...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Municipal corporations' claim that Delhi witnessed less than 2,000 dengue cases and five deaths as on September 12 is totally misleading. Records accessed by TOI show that AIIMS, Safdarjung, Lok Nayak, St Stephen's and Sir Ganga Ram hospitals alone have treated more than 2,400 dengue cases this season. These five hospitals have reported about 19 deaths, four times the number of dengue deaths being reported by...

-The Hindu Rescuing Maternal and Child Health-only systems, which have become under-resourced and have built a very high-cost but low-performance culture, will be a challenging task. Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, there is an increasing demand to build health systems that can address these concerns. However, given how large the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals is, the Indian government has chosen to stay focussed on Maternal and Child...