Copenhagen showed how fast and far India has traveled geo-politically. The same, alas, cannot be said about the health of the nation. On the international stage, India’s relentless focus on equity made us proud. The time has come to apply that principle at home. India’s ailing health delivery system is viewed as a worthy but dull topic on a normal day in a typical newsroom in the country. Typically, such neglected...

She was a minor; her alleged assaulter a man with clout. The police initially turned her away; while a decade later, her case is still on in courts. And while Ruchika Girhotra’s tragic story may have got the nation’s and government’s ear, no one remembers the then 13-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly gangraped on the night of the Dhuleti festival, a day after Holi, in a Vadodara village by...

Many did not use health centres for institutional deliveries  The Mission’s goal is to achieve 100 per cent institutional deliveries by 2012 Long term targets were not prescribed by 17 States The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has criticised the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) for “hampering” the smooth implementation of the Janani Suraksha Yojana – maternity benefit scheme — by delays and irregularities in the payment of incentives. In its latest...

A bench of the Supreme Court recently said: “When you say it is the world’s oldest profession and when you are not able to curb it by laws, why don’t you legalise it?” Really? While dealing with a PIL filed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan about large scale child trafficking in the country, a Supreme Court bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice AK Pattnaik are reported to have advised the...

The government’s bill to create a three-year diploma course to train “rural health practitioners” triggered protests from doctors today, who questioned the validity of such a diploma and threatened a statewide agitation. The West Bengal Health Regulatory Authority Bill will permit rural health practitioners with the three-year diplomas to treat patients in villages where qualified doctors don’t want to go. The health practitioners will not be called doctors, health minister Surjya Kanta...