-The Indian Express Privatisation does not make a self-reliant nation. A decentralised, people-centric approach to development will help Mahatma Gandhi’s conception of self-reliance was of simple living and self-sufficiency. The basic idea was to use local resources and a local workforce for the production of commodities for local consumption to the extent possible, with minimal dependence on the outside world. But the Indian government’s clarion call for “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India) has...

-TheWire.in In each of the four large South Asian nations, the response of the state to the pandemic has been shaped by long standing and underlying political faultlines. In parts one and two of this article, we have discussed the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, preparedness (in terms of health infrastructure), and the government’s public health responses to the pandemic in four South Asian countries. In this concluding part, we discuss two...

-News18.com On being asked about facilities like beds, ICUs and ventilators in Kerala to handle patients, Shailaja said, "We have about 1, 25,000 beds for COVID-19 patients as a part of plan A. According to our plan B, we can add more beds in private hospitals, hotels and even schools, if need arises." Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala, the state which reported first positive case of coronavirus in India on January 30, has been putting...

-The Indian Express The SNCU at Nashik civil hospital had attracted national attention after it reported the death of 55 newborn babies in August. The deaths, according to officials, were largely due to the high number of sick infants being admitted. Akola: On September 30, Sarla Velurkar realised she was in labour around midnight. Her home, in Dhamangaon village, is just a few minutes away from the rural hospital at Warwat-Bakal...

-The Indian Express Indian healthcare providers need to get serious about infection control. A deadly strain of bacterium has doubled its resistance to last-resort antibiotics within a year, according to the report “State of the World’s Antibiotics, 2015”. By an estimate, antimicrobial resistance — the ability of bugs to outwit antibiotics — will claim two million lives in India by 2050, a fifth of the total. India is under pressure to curb...