-The Hindu The health sector typifies the hands-off policy of the government in areas that impact welfare and livelihoods. An air of anticipation and optimism greeted the formation and installation of the new government in 2014. A widely held view was that it would be much more decisive than the previous dispensation in providing some direction to public policy. Twenty months have passed and the initial sense of optimism has been replaced...

-The Hindu Ex-official says priority setting in India is based on consultation, not evidence. Bangkok: India faces serious challenges in implementing Universal Health Coverage policies because of a “serious knowledge gap” among policy-makers and a “general unwillingness for change”, Rakesh Srivastava, former Director-General of Health Service, says. At a session on “Enabling better decisions for better health: embedding fair & systematic processes into priority setting for Universal Health Coverage” here, Mr. Srivastava said...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-The Hindu Among other things, the government must work towards giving life to the National Health Policy Even as millions of Indians wish each other health, happiness and hope in the new year, they also await news on the new National Health Policy which will become the GPS in our journey towards better health. The draft policy, which was framed by the Union Health Ministry, was placed for public comment just over...

-IANS Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda on Thursday said there was a need to set up a special task force comprising both government and private healthcare sectors to ensure quality healthcare for every citizen of India. "Our vision is to provide universal healthcare coverage despite several challenges in the health sector. It can better be done by a special task force comprising the ministry and representatives of private healthcare sector," Nadda said. He...