-The Hindu A takeaway from the pandemic is that India needs to revisit and refurbish its health infrastructure in the rural areas The two consecutive waves of COVID-19 and Mucormycosis have left us shattered. Multiple bruises have been caused to us. But during the second wave of the pandemic, it is our rural people who are struggling the most. They are struggling to get prompt and quality health care. The key role...

-GaonConnection.com A recent rural survey of 300 respondents in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, found 38% respondents preferred quacks for treatment, commonly known as nadi babas. Against 14% registering for COVID vaccination, only 4% went ahead for inoculation. These challenges need to be addressed urgently as the virus has spread in rural India. Sixty five per cent of India’s population resides in rural areas, while only 33 per cent of the health infrastructure caters...

-The Hindu Savvy urban residents book slots in rural PHCs while villagers sans smart phones are unable to register The government-mandated online registration process for COVID-19 vaccination has starkly exposed the digital divide in Telangana, with the Internet savvy urban population cornering access while the poorer, less aware rural people are left out as the second phase is rolled out. Unable to find online slot in the Twin Cities, several urban residents are...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Hindu Business Line Kerala’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the subject of international conversation about public health systems. Piloting Kerala’s fight against the pandemic is the State’s Health Minister and CPI(M)’s Central Committee member KK Shailaja who speaks exclusively to BusinessLine about the criticality of publicly-run healthcare and how the need of the hour is to nationalise the system. Excerpts: * What are the lessons to be learnt from...