-The Indian Express The steady state efficiency of healthcare needs to be raised so that crises like this one can be avoided. In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty; all are responsible.” While these words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel ring true for many social and political ills that appall us, they are also a timely reminder of our collective responsibility to correct the pathetic state of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In what could be a wake-up call for the Centre to fix weaknesses in the Swachh Bharat initiative, nearly 71% respondents in an online poll conducted by a social media group feel cleanliness in their cities and towns has not improved much in the past one year and want a greater municipal-citizen connect. The online poll on "local circles", which has over 3 lakh participants, provides...

-The Indian Express Under the plan, the state governments will identify the clusters in accordance with the framework for implementation prepared by the Ministry of Rural Development. In a bid to transform rural areas to economically, socially and physically sustainable spaces, the Cabinet Wednesday approved the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (SPMRM) with an outlay of Rs 5,142.08 crore to set up 300 rural clusters across the country by 2019-20. “The mission...

-The Hindu While the Rapid Survey on Children points to substantial progress in fields that have become a focus of serious action, such as safe delivery, it also highlights the penalties of inaction in other fields The recent release of summary findings from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) has generated remarkably little interest in the mainstream media. The main focus of attention so far has been the indifferent performance of Gujarat...

-The Hindu Rescuing Maternal and Child Health-only systems, which have become under-resourced and have built a very high-cost but low-performance culture, will be a challenging task. Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, there is an increasing demand to build health systems that can address these concerns. However, given how large the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals is, the Indian government has chosen to stay focussed on Maternal and Child...