-The Indian Express Surguja: One hundred and seventy-four children dead in 2010, 133 in 2011, 158 this year. In a region marked by gross poverty and hunger in north Chhattisgarh, those are the figures for just the Surguja district Hospital, and for just the six months between April-September. Most of the children died of malnutrition and anaemia, most of them within the first month of their life. Surguja collector R Prasanna concedes...

-Live Mint Incidents at Bhopal and Indore highlight irregularities and ethical violations in some trials In 2004, doctors at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC), established exclusively for treating the victims of the 1984 gas leak, recruited unsuspecting survivors for clinical trials without their knowledge or consent; 14 participants died during the course of the trials. Together with the episode in Indore’s Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital (that Mint reported on 10...

-DNA The police firing on dalits at Than town in Surendranagar district was the latest in a series of police atrocities committed on Scheduled Caste people in Gujarat. Most acts of police brutality towards dalits go unreported but even the five cases — including the Than incident — that were officially recorded in the last three months paint a sad picture of caste prejudice in the state. In one incident which took...

-The Hindu Family’s economic condition, their willingness to allow the girl child to continue studying and the literacy status of the mother were found to be among the key determinates among educationally backward families in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand that prevented girls from getting secondary education. According to a study report “The state of the girl child in India-2012’’ released here on Tuesday by non-government organisation Plan India that looked at...

-Live Mint The first in a two-part series examining the opaque world of clinical trials in India  A Hospital in Indore has been able to get away with unethical medical trials in which 32 people have died over five years, according to the state government. This despite several investigations, a state government ban and Supreme Court strictures—a classic example of the lawless nature of the clinical trial business in India.   Lata Mehra, who...