-The Business Standard Govt should streamline its free medicines plan The Centre is reportedly going to shelve a plan to procure generic drugs for free supply to patients throughout the country. This is a serious error. Reportedly, states will instead be asked to do so; but, if a perceived inability to procure, stock and distribute these drugs is the reason for backtracking on the plan, how precisely will states be free of...

-The Telegraph The Union health ministry has signalled its intentions to go ahead with plans to introduce a cadre of rural health care providers through a new BSc course, ignoring objections from a parliamentary panel. The ministry told Delhi High Court this week that it had sent a draft cabinet note on the three-and-a-half-year course in community health to the Prime Minister's Office for comments. This is standard procedure before the matter...

-The Economic Times Japanese companies do not mind erring on the side of caution. They are known to think longer and harder than their counterparts in other countries about big decisions, especially when it comes to entering a new market or acquiring a foreign company. But Japan's third biggest drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo would now wish it had spent more time doing due diligence on Ranbaxy Labs, in which it bought a...

-The Telegraph A physicians-led health group has expressed fears that the Centre is straying from plans to provide free essential medicines at public hospitals and to introduce universal healthcare services through tax revenues. The non-government Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) has said the plans for free essential medicines and an expansion and strengthening of public health services in rural areas appear to be in jeopardy because of inadequate health budget allocations. In a letter...

-The Hindu Over 1,00,000 children, below the age of 11 months, die of diarrhoea annually in India which is the second leading killer of young children globally, after pneumonia. India accounts for the highest number of diarrhoeal deaths, a latest study has suggested. A new international study published in the latest edition of the British medical journal The Lancetprovides the clearest picture yet of the impact and most common causes of diarrhoeal...