The state government has made a positive gesture by deciding to recruit doctors to fill up vacancies at government hospitals. But doctors are not willing to reciprocate. The government has decided to fill up 3,613 vacancies by March 2011 but only 1,200 doctors have applied for the posts in government hospitals across the state, said a source. Officials of Bihar Health Services Association (BHSA) — the organisation that represents doctors in...

If India is becoming a favourite destination for clinical trials, Maharashtra is the hub with Mumbai and Pune accounting for the largest number of clinical trials in the country. Maharashtra alone accounted for well over a quarter of all the clinical trials registered with the clinical trials registry of India till 2010. A study of the trials recorded in the registry, done by the Centre for Studies in Ethics and...

Politicians, business persons, civil servants, a range of professionals, including doctors and organisers of sports events, and even the judiciary have been in the media spotlight on charges of corruption, nepotism, sleaze and worse. It was to be only a matter of time before the media and media professionals came under public scrutiny for similar acts of omission and commission. The expose on paid news content in the media was...

United Nations agencies today launched new international guidelines aimed at helping to protect health workers who provide care to people infected with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) from becoming infected themselves in the course of their work. The guidelines, drafted by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), are designed to help doctors, nurses and midwives, pharmacists and laboratory technicians, as...

India may well be on its way to becoming a superpower, but for millions of marginalized communities — transgenders, female sex workers, men having sex with men (MSM), intravenous drug users (IDUs) — the struggle to live a life with dignity and respect continues. These communities face an uphill battle for a government recognised identity card cutting access to nearly all welfare schemes. Representatives from 20 NGOs and community based...