Absence of preventive measures and affordable and accessible health care leads to nearly 500 encephalitis deaths in Uttar Pradesh. IT is a strange paradox. In a country that aspires to be a superpower and boasts of rapid economic growth, 488 children died in a State, Uttar Pradesh, from encephalitis alone this year. It is nothing less than a national shame and tragedy. In six districts of Bihar, close to 200 children...

-The Times of India   The public health department has sought chief minister Prithviraj Chavan's intervention to introduce stringent clauses against medicos who complete their education from state-run or civic hospitals but refuse to serve the mandatory one-year rural stint.  According to an official, the government was considering not issuing medical registration certificates--which is mandatory for higher studies, pursuing job in any hospital or even for starting a dispensary of their own-to students...

It could take you as long as two years to get a date for a simple MRI scan in the country's premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) while a CAT scan has a waiting period of more than four months. Patients requiring a total hip replacement or a total knee replacement, will wait for no less than 5 months. A waiting list - ranging from 2 months to...

There are fears that curative health care will be left to the private sector, while the public system will handle preventive and low-quality care. AN issue of The Lancet earlier this year highlighted some of the problems with public health in India, acknowledging that “it is in crisis”. The robust economic growth over the past 20 years has not translated into better health indices; indeed the decline of infant and child...

India will take at least 17 more years before it can reach the World Health Organization's ( WHO) recommended norm of one doctor per 1,000 people. The Planning Commission's high-level expert group (HLEG) on universal health coverage (UHC) - headed by Dr K Srinath Reddy - has predicted the availability of one allopathic doctor per 1,000 people by 2028. It has suggested setting up 187 medical colleges in 17 high focus...