-The Hindu Much of the National Health Policy document reads like a report of health issues and systemic challenges, and is sorely wanting on policy detail Health impoverishment - falling into poverty due to health care costs - affects 63 million individuals in India every year. This is a damning statistic, especially when read with the fact that 18 per cent of all households face catastrophic health expenditures (health expenditure greater than...

-Business Standard Amendments skip key controversial issues The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has made nine amendments to its land Bill, tabled in Parliament on Monday. Most of these were cosmetic in nature, leaving the key elements of the original promulgation intact - the lack of need for consent and social impact assessment while acquiring land for private projects; public-private partnerships and government acquisitions. Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh did move two amendments...

-The Indian Express Raipur: The Chhattisgarh anti-corruption bureau (ACB), which is probing irregularities in supply of rice for the public distribution system (PDS) in the state, is scrutinising an alleged balance sheet which lists, among others, senior IAS officers and personal assistants to the food minister and chief secretary as beneficiaries of illegal commissions. The five-page balance sheet, recovered by the ACB from the office of Girish Sharma, personal assistant to...

-The Hindu Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the first indigenously developed and manufactured rotavirus vaccine on Monday here. Every year, diarrhoea caused by rotavirus results in up to 10 lakh Hospitalisations and kills nearly 80,000 children under the age of 5. The three-dose ROTAVAC vaccine, developed through a collaboration between India and the United States, is expected to help bring about a significant reduction in the 100,000 infant deaths caused by...

-Frontline Kerala is facing a situation where health care costs are leading more and more people, not just low-income families, to financial distress. KERALA is once again drawing attention to itself, this time for a persistent trend of a large number of households being pushed into financial ruin because of the expenses incurred for medical care. Several studies have now found evidence for the many facets of this worrying development in a...