-The Times of India The idea of a single National Health Mission to address the health challenges of the country's rural and urban population, as envisaged by the Planning Commission, is in the eye of a storm. The Union health ministry has made its stand clear that a uniform approach can never work. The letter written by the ministry to the Commission says that the health facilities in rural areas conform to a...

-The Times of India Indians are not only bad organ donors, but also averse to accepting brain death as the end of human life.  Doctors say most Indian families think their near and dear ones have a chance to recover till their hearts beat.  This slow acceptance of brain death — patients who have suffered complete and irreversible loss of all brain functions and are clinically and legally dead — is seriously affecting...

-The Economic Times India has some of the best quaternary and tertiary care in the world and is gradually acquiring a name for itself even in the field of 'medical tourism'. Secondary care is still a significant challenge, but even in several smaller towns and district headquarters, there is a growing supply of maternity homes and multi-speciality secondary care facilities. At all of these levels of care, given the large disease burden...

-The Economic Times India is a country of 1.2 billion people. One estimate, provided by the World Health Organization, suggests that, on average, one physician is required to serve 1,000 people, across all levels of care. This implies that we need a total of 1.2 million physicians to serve our population. However, the total number of formally-qualified allopathic doctors in the country is estimated to be only about half that number,...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...