-The Hindu Chennai: Completely unprepared for disasters: the hospitals in Chennai — private as well as government — were particularly vulnerable, improvising solutions as the situation developed. As water levels rose, Chennai saw every single system associated with modern life abysmally fail —houses collapsed, roads caved in, communication networks went down, sewage pipelines were wrecked, and carcasses floated on roads. Patients in government and private hospitals across the city took a beating. Completely...

-The Hindu What happened at Shishubhawan is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India's crumbling public health infrastructure. It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days. Even...

-The Indian Express In Hajipur’s two anganwadis, which take in children between six months and six years, untouchability is one of the first life lessons they learn. Patan (Gujarat): A digit separates anganwadis 159 and 160 in Hajipur village of Gujarat’s Patan district but the divisions are far greater. Now that’s complicated math for a three-year-old. So one morning, a few weeks ago, Manavi Chamar walked towards anganwadi No. 160, lost...

-Livemint.com A pair of eggs costs less than Rs8 today whereas 100gm of tur dal costs between Rs16 and Rs20 New Delhi: The recent spurt in the prices of pulses is causing much heartburn to governments and consumers. But this is not the first time that prices of pulses have shot up; within the foodgrain basket, production and price shocks are fairly regular for pulses but rare for rice or wheat. So, how...

-The Times of India DEHRADUN: The number of patients with 'severe mental disorders' has multiplied an astounding 100 times in the last three years in Uttarakhand — from 60 in 2012 to almost 7,000 today as per data compiled by the state health department. A large part of the quantum jump, say worried health officials, can be attributed to the devastating floods of 2013 that killed thousands and displaced lakhs, with...