-The Hindu Inducting Licentiate Medical Practitioners may be the solution to the chronic shortage of doctors in rural areas Nearly 600 million people in India, mostly in the rural areas, have little or no access to health care. A widespread disregard for norms, a perpetual failure to reach targets, and an air of utter helplessness are what mark the state of rural health care today. One can add to this another...

-Livemint.com A 2014 NSSO report shows that the majority of Indians prefer to consult private practitioners rather than public hospitals and those who do visit public hospitals often do so out of compulsion First it was Gorakhpur. Now it is Farrukhabad. The death toll in Uttar Pradesh’s government hospitals—from what appear to be preventable causes—has been mounting over the past month. Similar incidents have been reported from other states, pointing to the...

-The Hindu The State has taken the lead in providing some essential and basic health-care training to these informal providers. In West Bengal, nearly 3,000 quacks — informal health-care providers with no formal medical education — are to be trained for six months. The crash course in medicine, and to be conducted by 130 trained nurses, is to begin from December 1. The objective is to provide these informal providers with a minimum...

-PTI Mumbai: Voicing concern over death of 17,000 persons due to malnutrition in tribal areas of Maharashtra in the last one year, the Bombay High Court today asked the state government to take immediate steps to tackle it and submit details of central grants received for tribal welfare. A division bench of Justices V M Kanade and Swapna Joshi was hearing a bunch of PILs regarding malnutrition among children in Melghat region...

-The Hindu The National Medical Commission Bill’s proposal to permit ‘for profit’ colleges will undermine the aim of creating a cadre of medical professionals able and willing to work in small towns and villages The many reports commissioned by the Government of India on the state of medical care invariably highlight one fact: a large number of Indians do not have access to proper and adequate medical care. India currently faces a “double...