A 26-year-old man from Hooghly who lost his tongue to cancer in a Mumbai hospital last week has lent his voice to a public health campaign urging the Bengal government to ban the sale of gutka laced with tobacco. Mantu Mahato, who was diagnosed with advanced tongue cancer earlier this year, five years after he started chewing gutka, has written a letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee urging her to ban...

The Conflict of Interest Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a welcome step to control the grey areas in which “public private partnerships” are conducted. AMONG the many things that have proliferated in the economic boom of the brash new India is conflict of interest. So widespread, comprehensive and many-tentacled has this feature become that it is often no longer even recognised to exist, much less to be a...

The 28th of May, marked as “World Hunger Day,” has come and gone but for Pannu Bai Bhil, every day is hunger day. How does someone dealing with chronic hunger view a day marking her plight? Let those of us who overeat at least take stock of a hungry India pitted against bumper crops, number crunching, technologies for profit, markets, and growth rates. The solution for hunger lies in proper...

-The Indian Express Drug regulation is a mess. Everyone who propped up this irresponsible system is to blame Last week, a parliamentary standing committee on health delivered a thoroughly damaging report on the state of drug regulation in India, and the collusion between the regulator, industry and the medical profession that puts patients last. Over 118 pages, it said that the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) and the Drug Standards Control...

-The Telegraph The Centre today asked a panel of doctors to outline measures to improve drug approval procedures, three days after a parliamentary standing committee said India’s drug regulators had broken laws, ignoring the interests of patients. The panel announced by the Union health ministry has been asked to suggest steps to improve the procedural aspects of the Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO), the agency entrusted with approving medicines for sale...