The Bill to regulate medical education and govern human resource in Health is a highly diluted version of the original draft. Distortions in the area of Human Resource for Health (HRH) are the root cause of many of the ills facing the Health sector in India. Among them is the shortage of qualified medical professionals. The estimated density of 19 Health workers (qualified and unqualified) per 10,000 population is nearly 25...

The goal of universal Health care requires an overhaul of the public Health system, medical education and regulatory mechanisms. At long last, public Health is on the agenda of the country’s policy makers. The Prime Minister’s Republic Day speech mentioned that the Twelfth Plan would focus on Health just as the Eleventh Plan had focussed on education. But the manner in which the education sector has been messed with does not...

Actual targets remain far from desired rate With one maternal death reported every 10 minutes, India is likely to miss the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) related to maternal Health, a latest United Nations report says. While there is an improvement from maternal death in every six minutes in 2010 to 10 minutes now, the MDG target in this respect is unlikely to be met, the report said. At present, the Maternal Mortality...

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India , Jun 28 2012 (IPS) - Nurses in India are up in arms against the deterioration of the nursing profession in the country, including unfair wages and the policies of private hospital managements. Many exploited female nurses are leaving the country in droves, migrating to countries that offer better employment prospects and working conditions. Those that remain are taking to the streets, demanding decent pay and the enforcement of labour...

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is often in the news for wrong reasons. But when he says that India’s major problems are Naxalism and malnutrition, we need to sit up and listen. It was on January 10, 2012, that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called hunger and malnutrition a national shame while releasing the Naandi Foundation’s Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) Survey Report 2011. It was a high-profile occasion, given that the multi-party...