Just over five years ago, a global study had labelled India the world’s “lone polio exporter”, prompting the United Nations secretary-general to write a letter of concern to Manmohan Singh. Even three years ago, anti-polio workers in western Uttar Pradesh, then the disease’s epicentre in India, were often abused and driven away when they came to the villages for the vaccination programme. Such memories today flooded into the minds of doctors and...

Crib deaths have once again returned to haunt Malda Medical College and Hospital. At least 8 children, mostly newborns, died at the hospital in the last 24 hours. While three of the babies were born in the hospital itself, the others were referred to the district hospital. One of the babies was even admitted to the sick newborn care unit (SNCU). doctors blamed the deaths on low birth weight or premature...

-The Times of India   When district officials in Mehsana studied records of gynaecologists recently, they were stunned to find out that many were virtually running son-producing centres. Mehsana town is infamous with its ratio at just 760 girls per 1,000 boys - the lowest in the country. Some of the doctors in the region have individual ratios of just 600 per 1,000 boys in the past few months. Alarmed, government officials have...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is likely to run into a debate on public health policy after the Planning Commission moved to nix a proposal to include healthcare in the list of public entitlements such as education and food. Central to the proposal—initiated by a high-level expert group (HLEG) headed by K. Srinath Reddy, a leading advocate of preventive cardiology and president of the Public Health Foundation of India—was the...

In a macabre act of caste violence, a Dalit youth in Saniyana village was attacked with a sharp-edged weapon and had his arm nearly chopped off for drinking water from an earthen pot belonging to an upper caste family. While doctors have stitched up his arm, the police arrested one Rajender of Daulatpur village and booked him under SC/ST Act. Police sources said that Pappu first inquired about the caste of the...