Programme aims to reduce shortage of doctors in rural areas  Students to be encouraged to take up the course and then work in rural areas It is not possible to restrict doctors according to geographic area: IMA The Indian Medical Association, the largest non-government organisation of allopathic doctors in the country, has come out strongly against the Medical Council of India’s proposal to start a rural MBBS course called Bachelor of Rural...

Beware. If you are poor, go to a municipal or government hospital and seek medical help, chances are that anything can be done to you and if it affects your life or livelihood, there is nothing can be done to secure protection even if it is a case of medical negligence. Because, when you do not pay, you are getting things "not for a consideration" and when that consideration -- fees...

Companies such as L&T, IL&FS, Dr Reddy’s and NIIT will soon train and employ youths from Below Poverty Line (BPL) families, based on the success of a pilot project in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, implemented under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The National Rural Livelihoods Mission, to be taken to the Cabinet by the Rural Development Ministry soon, envisages the training of 1.1 lakh unskilled youth over the next...

Food prices have shot up by more than 20 per cent in the course of the past 12 months. A vast proportion of the nation is being battered by the price rise — the fixed income group, the working classes, landless peasantry and small farmers who have to buy at least a part of the grains they consume from the market. There is, however, no upheaval among the suffering people....

Insufficiency and prescribing medicines from outside continues  CRM draws attention to ‘irrational’ use and non-availability of essential medicines Supplies are mostly top-down, based on availability instead of being demand-based No State provides free medicines to below the poverty line (BPL) patients under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). “The insufficiency of drugs and thereby the imperative of prescribing medicines from outside continue widely. This could also be linked to insufficiency of understanding...