Number of centres to be frozen There are nearly 2,300 PHCs in the State Freezing the number will help improve the PHCs Ten of the 30 districts in the State have very poor healthcare services while an equal number of districts have good facilities. Given the need to streamline the system, the State Government has decided to freeze the number of Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and utilise the available funds for improving the...

Census data released on Thursday has brought some cheer with the revelation that the population growth has finally slowed down in India. Yet, it also pointed towards an alarming fact that the sex ratio in the age group between 0-6 has fallen. Even though, the people claim that they no longer differentiate between male and female offspring, Doctors have a sorry tale to narrate. Homemaker, Sangita Acharya said that her five-year-old daughter,...

The lowest child sex ratio in 50 years revealed by the 2011 census reflects India’s failure to stop selective abortion of female foetuses despite laws against sex selection and campaigns to promote goodwill towards girls, sections of Doctors said. The 2011 census released today by the registrar general of India has shown that the ratio of girls to boys up to six years of age has dropped to 914 girls for...

Leprosy has officially been eliminated in India, yet 130,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Richard Cookson and Seyi Rhodes report on the plight of the patients shunned by society Narsappa was just 10 years old when he was told he had leprosy, but the news changed the course of his life forever. People in his Indian village immediately began to shun him and told his parents that he had to...

Six months ago, when dictrict collector R Prasanna was transferred from Maoist-affected Bijapur to neighbouring Dantewada, local residents held rallies urging him not to leave. Now, as he readies to launch a development plan for Dantewada on April 1, Prasanna finds himself transferred. The collector's transfer comes after days of intense drama during which the district police stood accused of torching nearly 300 homes in three villages and obstructing both...