-The Hindu Health activists remind the Prime Minister of his last year's promise of free medication which will fulfil people's right to essential medicines Last year during his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced free distribution of medicines through government hospitals and health centres. One year down the line, however, the promise is far from being fulfilled and the declaration has made...

-PTI Indian women cannot act as surrogate mothers for more than three births, including those of their own children, a draft bill to regulate the country's burgeoning wombs-for-rent industry has proposed. The Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bill also proposes that surrogate mothers should have a mandatory two-year interval between deliveries, whether of surrogate babies or their own children. After the health ministry receives comments on the draft from other key ministries, the bill...

-The Hindu     The Planning Commission's spurious method shows a decline in poverty because it has continuously lowered the measuring standard The Planning Commission has once again embarrassed us with its claims of decline in poverty by 2011-12 to grossly unrealistic levels of 13.7 per cent of population in urban areas and 25.7 per cent in rural areas, using monthly poverty lines of Rs. 1000 and Rs. 816 respectively, or Rs. 33.3 and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A close scrutiny of the accounts of the Bihar government shouldn't surprise you about the midday meal (MDM) tragedy that claimed the lives of more than 20 children last week. To make matters worse, there were serious infrastructure inadequacies in government hospitals meant to treat children who had taken ill. The level of Bihar government's lethargy and callousness is far more serious than what is known...

-The Hindu The current market prices are essentially over and above the actual cost of production - a difference that could run from 100 per cent to 5,600 per cent, depending upon various therapeutic categories In a liberalised market economy, do we need price controls on drugs? Policymakers and the pharmaceutical industry do not think so. They believe that price controls are an inefficient tool that distorts resource allocation, squeezes revenue, reduces...