-The Economic Times WASHINGTON: Big Pharma found little support from the small guy on the street as the Indian Supreme Court's decision to reject patent claims of the drug maker Novartis for its celebrated cancer medicine Glivec reverberated across the world. The pharma lobby railed against the decision but the overwhelming sentiment, from Physicians to politicians, from academia to media, particularly in a country groaning from the high cost of health care,...

-Outlook While great awareness has been raised about sexual violence against women in India, much less is known about the problem of sexual abuse of children' Summary The rape and murder of a student in New Delhi on December 16, 2012, followed by large public protests, has led to a great deal of soul searching about the problem of sexual violence in India. Politicians, lawyers, women’s rights activists, and an independent government...

-The Telegraph A children’s vaccine against a stomach infection has triggered controversy with some doctors claiming there is not enough data to show it is effective in India and accusing a leading drug company of using a misleading advertisement to promote the vaccine. GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (GSK) has stopped the advertisement for the vaccine intended to protect children from potentially life-threatening rotavirus infections after the advertising industry’s self-regulating body upheld a doctor’s complaint...

-The Times of India Rural positing for six months will soon become compulsory for undergraduate medical students before they get their MBBS degree with the Medical Council of India (MCI) recently presenting the proposal to the health ministry. At present, an MBBS course of 5.5 years includes one year of internship. However, most of these medical students end up practising in urban settings, refusing to serve the country's rural population. The MCI has...

-The Times of India The idea of a single National Health Mission to address the health challenges of the country's rural and urban population, as envisaged by the Planning Commission, is in the eye of a storm. The Union health ministry has made its stand clear that a uniform approach can never work. The letter written by the ministry to the Commission says that the health facilities in rural areas conform to a...