A cure for India’s health care ills is within reach provided there is political will In most developed — and many developing — countries today, a 12-year school education and universal health coverage (UHC) are the two primary responsibilities of the state. India has failed miserably on both counts. Let us look at some of the problems of medical and health care: • Fifty years ago, when there was no commercialisation of...

-The Indian Express Enact a law to regulate assisted reproduction industry, protect donors and recipients The death of 17-year-old Sushma Pandey, an underage egg donor in Mumbai, has drawn attention to assisted reproduction, which has grown to the proportions of an industry but is not regulated by a legislative framework or competent institutions. While her death cannot be immediately linked to the fact that she was a donor, it must underline the...

-The Hindu Offers of help poured in following a report in The Hindu A Narikurava youth of Vallimalai village near Uthangarai in Krishnagiri district has got an MBBS seat in the Government Medical College, Thanjavur, through counselling held in Chennai on July 9. M. Rajapandi secured 1,167 marks out of 1,200 in the Plus-Two examination, and his score in the relevant subjects during counselling was 197.75. He was ranked 1014 under general category. Under the...

-The Hindu Journalists need to adopt a set of integrity measures in order to police the boundaries between the market and political power   Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and the world’s wealthiest woman, is seeking three board seats following her purchase of 18.7 per cent of Fairfax which owns most papers in Australia not controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd. There has already been considerable upheaval in two of the Fairfax papers...

Tuberculosis re-emerges as a major threat as new drug-resistant strains develop because of mismanagement of the disease. At the beginning of the year, doctors at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre reported that they had 12 patients infected with TDR-TB, or totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a condition in which the TB bacilli is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used in the conventional treatment of the disease. Panic...