Number of centres to be frozen There are nearly 2,300 PHCs in the State Freezing the number will help improve the PHCs Ten of the 30 districts in the State have very poor healthcare services while an equal number of districts have good facilities. Given the need to streamline the system, the State Government has decided to freeze the number of Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and utilise the available funds for improving the...

Food security should be used as an indicator of vulnerability to climate change Staple food varieties better adapted to future climatic conditions must be developed “Potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes are expected to increasingly hit the developing world in the future, and action is required now to prepare for those impacts, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned on Thursday in a report to the United Nations...

Amid technical and infrastructural constraints, Maharashtra has rolled out 1.2 million Aadhaars, but the beneficiaries have been able to make little use of these numbers Ashok Bhil, a 25-year-old graduate from Navalpur, 7 Km from Tembhli, is disappointed with the way the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is rolling out Aadhaar in Maharashtra. Last September, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government chose Tembhli, a small village in the predominantly tribal Nandurbar...

This week could see far-reaching beneficial consequences for health care in India. But we need to ensure that the emerging paradigm shift does not miss out on what medical education can and should do to overcome the inadequacies. Recent events in our country have been full of sound and fury, which have disillusioned the public with their futility. But this week has the potential for promising developments in Indian medical education...

Tuberculosis continues to be a major health problem in India. But the unveiling of a new test to diagnose TB and drug resistance on World Tuberculosis Day (March 24) brings some hope into a bleak scenario. Last Thursday, on World Tuberculosis Day, for the first time since the 1880s there was probably some justifiable cause for jubilation. After centuries of grappling with sputum smear microscopy, developed way back in the 1880s,...