-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today issued notices to all states and Union territories asking them to explain unsafe and unhygienic sterilisation drives in violation of an earlier order for safe procedures. The move came on a PIL by a health rights activist who alleged inhuman sterilisations continued in rural areas in “reckless disregard” of the lives of poor women, especially in Bihar. In one case, 53 women were sterilised in two hours...

Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day. "The higher up you go, the cleaner the water is likely to be, but there is a limit to how far one can climb to fetch a pitcher of water," she told IPS....

-The Hindu Moving towards major reforms, the Centre is in the process of rolling out a universal health coverage package in at least one district in each State on an experimental basis. This would include a clearly defined basket of services to those who come to any public health facility for treatment or free supply of generic drugs, doing away with user charges and upgrading public health infrastructure right from the primary...

-The Times of India   Health services in the state are likely to get a new fillip with 388 regular Doctors being appointed and posted in rural parts of the state. Appointment letters were handed over to the Doctors by chief minister Arjun Munda at a function organized by state health department and Jharkhand Rural Health Mission (JRHMS) at the Reproductive and Child Health Centre, Namkum on Thursday. Handing over the appointment letters...

-DNA The Karnataka government will introduce an ordinance to make it mandatory for MBBS undergraduates and postgraduates to serve one year in rural areas, immediately after successful completion of the course. In the legislative assembly, chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda accepted the suggestion of Sharanaprakash Rudrappa Patil (Congress), who highlighted the issue of shortage of Doctors in Mudhol community health centre in Sedam taluk and the number of vacant posts. Gowda said the...