-TheWire.in * On May 5, 2022, the WHO estimated that 100.51 lakh people died in India in 2020. Of this, it estimated 8.30 lakh were COVID-linked deaths. * In its May 5 press release rejecting the WHO figures, the Union health ministry claimed that 81.20 lakh people died in 2020 – even lower than the number estimated to have died in 2019. * But the health ministry was wrong by a long margin...
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In Eight Years of Modi's Rule, Eight Hits and Misses by the Health Ministry -Banjot Kaur
-TheWire.in The health ministry – which has been thrust into spotlight even more than usual due to the unprecedented crisis of the pandemic – missed some significant deadlines. New Delhi: When the Narendra-Modi led Union government marked eight years in office in May, its various ministries launched a veritable social media blitzkrieg to highlight achievements. Among them was the health and family welfare ministry – one that has had particular reason to...
More »Why Eradicating Open Defecation Is Not the Same as Setting up New Toilets -Sujeet Kumar
-TheWire.in * India has reduced open defecation and made some progress to improve sanitation services. But its sanitation system is not yet sustainable and not yet safe. * In Tapoban Basti in Bhubaneswar, some men avoid using the toilet every day to not have to incur the cost of cleaning out the septic tank. * In a basti on the outskirts of Jaipur, a community toilet slowly ran out of water and the...
More »Have India and South Africa, Lead Sponsors of the TRIPS Waiver Proposal, Reconciled to a Weak Text? -Priti Patnaik
-TheWire.in At the cusp of the 12th WTO ministerial conference, the co-sponsors seem to be giving up on the fight. Geneva: After more than 18 months of bringing their bold proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily suspend some intellectual property protections to decisively address COVID-19 in an effort to enable local manufacturing capacity, sponsors India and South Africa do not seem to be leading from the front, Geneva-based trade...
More »In India, What Explains Distribution Margins and Drug Prices Being Linked? -Murali Neelakantan and Ashish Kulkarni
-TheWire.in A Tata Nano pays the same toll to go from Mumbai and Pune on the expressway as does a Rolls Royce. Why should pharmaceutical products be any different? On May 26, amid news reports about yet another closed-door meeting that the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) had had with unspecified stakeholders, we were reminded of an interesting press release that the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers had issued in July 2021. The...
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