The health ministry has questioned the benefits to India of a proposed bill aimed at regulating the entry of foreign universities, unleashing the most scathing criticism the draft legislation has faced from within the government. The draft Foreign Education (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill contains loopholes that could deny India benefits to medical education and could even hurt the sector, the health ministry has said. The criticism of the bill...

Health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra today pushed through the Assembly a bill that will allow “half-Doctors” to practise in villages, steamrollering a demand from the Left Front and the Opposition to defer the legislation. The West Bengal Health Regulatory Authority Bill will permit “rural health practitioners” with a three-year diploma to treat patients in villages where qualified Doctors are loath to go. The “health practitioners” will not be called Doctors, the...

Drug companies in India will be prohibited from handing out cash or gifts or stand-alone entertainment to Doctors under a code of ethics proposed by industry associations to govern the marketing of medicines. But the code has run into rough weather even before it has been adopted, with at least two industry associations disassociating themselves from the document, tabled at a meeting called today by the government’s department of pharmaceuticals. The two...

In a year of sparse rains and spiralling food prices, with hundreds of districts being officially declared as drought-hit, a rally by activists in the capital demands a Food Entitlements Act.  Perhaps the most vocal demands at the rally were those aimed at a complete revamp of the Public Distribution System (PDS), starting with universal — instead of targeted — coverage. Over 5,000 grassroots activists, agricultural workers, farmers, lawyers, Doctors and...

According to a report by Shirish Khare in NewsWing.com, a news portal dedicated to raising the issues of the voiceless in the Hindi belt, 25 children have died in just two villages of Meghnagar block in the month of October at the tribal dominated Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. The report (see text link below) cites under-nutrition as the likely reason for the tragedy. The alarming NewsWing.com report says that the...