-The Hindu Business Line By converting a necessity into a virtue, the government has decided to release the large inventory of procured pulses to different States at a discounted rate for utilisation in various welfare programs. Necessity because the stocks continue to occupy scarce warehousing space and incur huge carrying costs. Also, the Centre thinks, warehousing space may be needed during the upcoming kharif harvest less than six weeks away; and of course,...

-The Hindu Business Line The Ayushman Bharat programme must aim to reverse poverty caused by healthcare expenses The state of India’s healthcare system is somewhat dichotomous — the country is a global supplier of life-saving, affordable and good quality generic medicines, yet lakhs of families are driven into poverty because they are forced to spend much of their earnings and savings on medications to treat chronic and life-threatening diseases. The poor, particularly,...

-The Indian Express The state Cabinet on Tuesday ratified the draft medical policy, which, among others, proposes a standard treatment guideline covering all hospitals to ensure 'rationale, effective and affordable treatment'. Thiruvananthapuram: In an effort to ensure that all children below the age of five are immunised, the Left Front government in Kerala has made vaccination certificate mandatory for admission to class-I from the next academic session. Health Minister K K Shailaja...

-The Hindu Business Line The National Health Protection Scheme is promising but sketchy The National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), which promises to provide a cover of ?5 lakh each to 10 crore households (50 crore people, or about 40 per cent of the population), marks a big step forward to make secondary and tertiary healthcare affordable to the poor. The initiative is likely to reduce “catastrophic” out-of-pocket expenses, which are estimated to...

-TheWire.in This is the last full budget of the present government and the last opportunity for it to demonstrate its commitment to India’s health and nutrition. Slow improvements in basic indicators of maternal and child mortality, double burden of communicable as well as non-communicable diseases, high out-of-pocket expenditure, a failing public sector and heavily commercialised private sector characterise the healthcare crisis in India. The year 2017 saw a number of incidents in the...