-TheWire.in Why has India chosen the path of expanding medical insurance instead of a more comprehensive approach to health? The concern with rising inequities in access to medical care, rising out-of-pocket expenditures and unmet treatment needs have been addressed with yet another targeted medical insurance scheme for poor households. The idea of a targeted medical insurance is not new. Several southern states like Andhra Pradesh and karnataka had introduced such schemes many...

-Hindustan Times The Atal Bhujal Yojana will be launched in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh The government has finalised the contours of a Rs 6,000-crore scheme to tackle the country’s depleting groundwater level, almost a year-and-a-half after finance minister Arun Jaitley announced the plan in the Union Budget. Called the Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABY) and piloted by the Union water resources ministry, the scheme now needs the cabinet’s...

-TheWire.in This is the last full budget of the present government and the last opportunity for it to demonstrate its commitment to India’s health and nutrition. Slow improvements in basic indicators of maternal and child mortality, double burden of communicable as well as non-communicable diseases, high out-of-pocket expenditure, a failing public sector and heavily commercialised private sector characterise the healthcare crisis in India. The year 2017 saw a number of incidents in the...

  Budgetary allocation to a particular sector indicates how much priority the government assigns to that sector as compared to the rest. A preliminary analysis by the Inclusive Media for Change team indicates that the actual expenditure (net of receipts and recoveries) by two of the country’s most important ministries, namely the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) and the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) was less than 1 percent...

-The Times of India DEHRADUN: As many as 62% young women in the country in the age group 15 to 24 years still use cloth for menstrual protection, as per the national family health survey (NFHS) IV whose findings were released recently. According to the report which pertains to the years 2015-16, a staggering 82% young women in Bihar still depend on clothes for protection during their menstrual cycle. The situation...