-TheWire.in This is the last full budget of the present government and the last opportunity for it to demonstrate its commitment to India’s health and nutrition. Slow improvements in basic indicators of maternal and child mortality, double burden of communicable as well as non-communicable diseases, high out-of-pocket expenditure, a failing public sector and heavily commercialised private sector characterise the healthcare crisis in India. The year 2017 saw a number of incidents in the...

-Scroll.in To spend 2.5% of GDP on healthcare by 2025, the centre and state governments must increase healthcare allocation by 24% over the same period of time. Healthcare needs continue to cause financial hardship to people across India. The National Health Accounts 2014-’15 report reveals that more than two-thirds of total spending on health (67%) is household out-of-pocket expenditure. The report tracks how much money is spent on health and how money...

-Economic and Political Weekly Healthcare as a public good should be available free of charge at the point of service delivery. This was the case across India until a flurry of reforms from the early 1990s onwards notified user charges for various health services in public health facilities. Since then, Public Expenditure on Healthcare has seen a decline from a high of 1.5% of gross domestic product in the mid-1980s to...

-The Hindu Business Line The declining response ratios due to excess spraying of fertilisers, which leads to wasteful expenditure on fertiliser subsidy, only leads to loss of key national resources Hyderabad: India is on the verge of a looming soil crisis which can potentially impact its agriculture in the near future, says a report. A third of the total 350 million hectares has already turned problematic. Soil is turning either acidic, saline, sodic...

-The Indian Express India’s healthcare debate should go back to the 40-year-old declaration that accords centrality to the local medical worker. India’s healthcare crisis has evoked a policy debate with arguments being made in favour of and against the public and private sector. S.N. Mohanty (‘Fixing healthcare’, IE, November 11) summarises the arguments of both sides very well. He concludes that there is a need to “design the public health system around...