-The Hindu In addition to ailments caused by poverty, salt pan workers across the country suffer from several occupational diseases, including chronic dermatitis, loss of vision and hypothyroidism In Adivasi Colony, a remote hamlet off the road from Vedaranyam to Kodikarai in Tamil Nadu, most of the adults in the 200-odd households work in salt manufacturing. They prepare salt pans manually, irrigate them with saline water which is three times saltier than...

-The Hindu The Union Ministry of Labour has done well to raise the salary cap for availing Employees' State Insurance (ESI) to Rs.25,000. While the move is expected to expand coverage to an additional five million workers and their dependents, this is still small comfort in a country where barely three per cent of the workforce enjoys any social protection. The evolution of ESI has been characterised by an accent...

-The Hindu Poverty takes a huge toll on the mind and on this World Mental Health Day, the focus should be on the well-being offered by community-based alternative approaches In recent years, the impact of mental illness on the social and economic health of nations has been well understood, placing mental ill health as one of the leading causes of disability adjusted life years (DALY) worldwide. There has been much focus on...

-The Hindu After years of neglect, childhood tuberculosis - which accounts for over six per cent of the global TB burden - is finally getting due attention. WHO recently published its first-ever targeted road map outlining the steps needed to move towards zero childhood TB deaths. The report comes close on the heels of the organisation including for the first time the estimates of the global TB burden in children...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government is having a rethink about the efficacy of its flagship health insurance scheme, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), which has earned a lot of critical acclaim from the likes of the World Bank, Harvard University and global think tanks. The scheme offers healthcare benefits worth Rs 30,000 per year to a poor household that can be accessed at empanelled private and public hospitals across...