Within weeks of getting bail from the Supreme Court in connection with charges of sedition, human rights activist Binayak Sen has been made member of the Planning Commission's Steering Committee on Health, which will advise the panel on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-2017). Binayak Sen, who was released on bail from the Raipur jail last month, will, based on his experience of having worked as a paediatrician in Chhattisgarh's tribal belt,...
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Health budget may go up by 2% by Kounteya Sinha
India plans to increase its allocation for health to 2%-3% of its GDP over the next five years. Public spending on health was 0·94% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004–05, which was among the lowest in the world. Private expenditure on health in India is about 78% as compared to 14% in the Maldives, Bhutan (29%), Sri Lanka (53%), Thailand (31%) and China (61%). Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on...
More »Depriving dalits of their due by Jayati Ghosh
The arrest of Suresh Kalmadi on 25 April marked yet another scene in the prolonged drama surrounding the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi in October 2010. Yet the general media focus on Kalmadi may have served to distract attention from the many other acts of omission and commission that mark the sordid history of that extravagantly planned and deeply flawed public show. In these other actions, there are stories of funds...
More »UN urges action on ‘slow-motion catastrophe’ of non-communicable diseases
The head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned today that the “slow-motion catastrophe” of non-communicable diseases could overwhelm even the wealthiest nations if the root causes of the epidemic, mostly lifestyle decisions, are not addressed. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, told delegates at the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control in Moscow that the fact the many of the chronic non-communicable illnesses in...
More »Can India prevent 200 children dying every hour? by Poonam Khetrapal-Singh
It is estimated that India lost 1.8 million children under five in 2008. That is more than 200 child deaths every hour, each day, or more than three deaths every minute. Out of about 25 million babies born every year in India, one million die. Most who survive do not get to grow up and develop well. About 48 per cent are stunted (sub-normal height) and 43 per cent are...
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