-The Times of India A once-a-week medicine for diabetics — a disease that affects nearly 63 million Indians — could soon become a reality. Studies on diabetes have seen a global upsurge, with the latest data showing that bio-pharmaceutical research companies across the globe are busy developing 221 innovative new medicines. The drugs, which will help around 347 million patients include new therapies that target key abnormalities of pancreatic cells, increase insulin secretion...

-The Indian Express As the 2015 target for achieving millennium development goals adopted in 1990 approaches, the time has come to take stock of various countries’ performances and identify areas that need more attention. The Unicef recently released a report which categorically stated that India will not be able to achieve the goal of an under-five mortality rate (U5MR) of 42 by 2015. The report further stated that only six of...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: Vector control is a baseless charade in Jharkhand, which grapples with a host of maladies like dengue, malaria, chikungunya, kala-azar and filaria every year and yet lacks a single specialist who can analyse and effectively arrest the scourge. Four posts of entomologists — two each for Ranchi and Hazaribagh zones — and two of assistant entomologists have been lying vacant for at least two years for reasons best known...

-Live Mint While natural disasters grab our attention, everyday events like illness drag most people into poverty  In a small town of Gujarat, I met Chandibai, a woman, about 50 years of age. Fifteen years previously, her husband, Gokalji, had owned a general-purpose shop in the town centre. The family also owned a house and some agricultural land. In 1989, Gokalji developed an illness that confined him to bed, sometimes at home...

-The Economic Times Nazia is 10 years old. But, according to a claim filed by Chhattisgarh-based Shaheed Hospital with the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), she has delivered a baby after a caesarean operation. Mukul (name changed) is only 7. But Agarwal Hospital, Raipur, has made a claim for removing cataract from his eyes. A large number of similar implausible claims, being made by private hospitals enrolled to treat poor patients under...