JANAKI KNOWS well that it is hard for her to rear more than four children. Yet she is not willing to go to the sterilisation camp. Her husband would be of no help in taking such a decision. “He drinks heavily, beats me up every day,” she says. Janaki is not able to express her fears in clear terms, but it is difficult to imagine her summoning up the courage...

Thousands of children and women die every year in India due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Why is it that, in the Mecca of medical tourism, the poor continue to be denied the right to health? A national television channel had a 30-minute special recently on how private hospitals are denying free medical treatment to poor patients. Under a quota, private hospitals are expected to provide medical treatment...

The virus causing the deadly Crimea Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) in Ahmedabad has jumped from infected ticks to local cattle like sheep, goat and cows. Cattle samples collected from six villages around ground zero -- Kolat village in Sanand whose resident Amina Momin was the first human in India to get infected with CCHF and die on January 3 -- have tested positive for high viral load. Speaking to TOI,...

Nearly 139 million Indians were suffering from high blood pressure (BP) at the end of 2008 — 14% of the global burden of uncontrolled hypertension. From 1980-2008, the number of Indians suffering from high BP rose by 87 million, while the percentage of population suffering from the ailment rose from 21% to 26%. The latest data of the "Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors" study, published in the British...

The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on welfare programmes. To begin with, it wants to end the public distribution system of food grain and give money directly to the people. Its logic: the new system of cash transfer will plug leakages and save an enormous amount of money. But is it...