-The Hindu Bengaluru: The NITI Aayog proposal to hand over district hospitals with 750 beds to private medical colleges, citing the public-private-partnership (PPP) arrangements in Karnataka and Gujarat, has come under severe criticism from health activists and doctors, who feel it will further compromise quality and access to healthcare, mainly for the poor. They have demanded that the move be dropped without further consultation. The Centre’s top think tank recently released for...

-Newsclick.in A plethora of evidence shows that in India, public-private partnerships have either been rolled back or have led to poor health outcomes. Recently, government think-tank NITI Aayog came up with a proposal for running district hospitals in public-private partnership (PPP) mode. Under the proposal, new and existing private medical colleges will be linked with functional district hospitals. According to sources, the proposal is open to public comments till February 10, 2020. There...

-The Indian Express Dr Manoj Thaguria said, “A lot of patients revisit the dispensaries, hence the high number of beneficiaries. Some also manage to get a second course of prescribed medicines on the same day." Jaipur: In his budget address earlier this week, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot increased the number of free medicines from 608 to 712 and free tests from 70 to 90, under the Chief Minister’s Free Medicine...

-The Telegraph Nearly 80 per cent of SC, ST and OBC students who cracked NEET cleared the cut-off meant for general-category students The results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, declared on Wednesday, have shown that aspiring doctors from underprivileged social backgrounds are no less than general-category students when it comes to merit. Nearly 80 per cent of students from among the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes who cracked the NEET...

-The Telegraph Call to colleges to take urgent action Two health networks on Tuesday called on medical education institutions to take steps to protect their students from caste-based discrimination that allegedly led a young doctor to commit suicide in Mumbai on May 22. The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) and the Medico Friends Circle (MFC) have labelled the suicide of Payal Tadvi, a doctor from an Adivasi community pursuing postgraduate studies in gynaecology at...