The goal of universal health care requires an overhaul of the public health system, medical education and regulatory mechanisms. At long last, public health is on the agenda of the country’s policy makers. The Prime Minister’s Republic Day speech mentioned that the Twelfth Plan would focus on health just as the Eleventh Plan had focussed on education. But the manner in which the education sector has been messed with does not...

Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is often in the news for wrong reasons. But when he says that India’s major problems are Naxalism and malnutrition, we need to sit up and listen. It was on January 10, 2012, that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called hunger and malnutrition a national shame while releasing the Naandi Foundation’s Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) Survey Report 2011. It was a high-profile occasion, given that the multi-party...

-The United Nations With three important targets on poverty, slums and water having been met, a new United Nations report stresses the need for a true global partnership to achieve the remaining Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline.   The 2012 MDG Report offers “the most comprehensive picture yet” on global progress towards the Goals, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he launched the report at the high-level segment of the annual...

-The Pioneer Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday said the government is proposing a new National Urban Health Mission to focus on the health challenges of people in towns and cities while it would continue the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) for another five years. Delivering his address at the third convocation of the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) here, Singh said: "Our government has decided to continue the...