-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...

-The Hindu Business Line Battling childhood diarrhoea with an Indian vaccine is good strategy Almost half of India's 1,76,000 diarrhoeal deaths in children below five are caused by rotavirus, the pathogen responsible for severe childhood diarrhoea. In addition, 8 lakh hospitalisations and over 30 lakh outpatient visits each year among children below 5 are triggered by diarrhoea of rotavirus origin. WHO recommends the rotavirus vaccine for infants in all national immunisation programmes. Globally,...

-The Times of India "Number of deaths may shoot up to 1.2 million by 2035" Every year nearly one million new cancer cases are diagnosed in India, the prevalence being 2.5 million. With mortalities of 6,00,000-7,00,000 a year, cancer causes six per cent of all adult deaths in the country. The number of deaths per year is projected to shoot up to 1.2 million by 2035, according to a series of papers published...

-The Hindu For India, which has successfully kept naturally-occurring ‘wild' polioviruses at bay for three whole years, a new challenge looms. India is among 140 countries that rely on the oral polio vaccine (OPV). These countries have now been asked to introduce an injectable inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) into their routine childhood immunisation programme by the end of next year. The oral vaccine, which is cheap and easily administered, uses live but weakened...

-Down to Earth Giving patents to foreign-made medicines will add to patients' woes, they urge Health activists staged a protest in front of the office of Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday, demanding that the government should ensure that oral drugs to treat Hepatitis C are made available to patients. The demonstrators were later assured by the ministry officials that they would look into the matter...