-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...

-The Hindu Its success in getting universal coverage has lessons for India As Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visits New Delhi this Republic Day, one interesting field of cooperation to explore in the strategic partnership is healthcare. Achieving universal health coverage is a very complex task, especially for developing countries. Here, the example of Brazil, the only country where more than 100 million inhabitants have a universal health system, is worth studying. It...

-The Hindu While the children’s families blame the staff of Kota’s J.K. Lon Hospital for negligence, studies show that the government hospital is poorly equipped and understaffed. Mohammed Iqbal reports on the failure of the primary healthcare system which has led to the deaths of more than a hundred children in the last 40 days When four-month-old Tejas had a constant cough, ran a high fever and experienced shortness of breath in...

-The Indian Express A reworking of curriculum and activities is urgently needed for the age band from four to eight. ASER 2019 report underlines this While the importance of good early childhood education has been known for a long time, the draft New Education Policy (released in June 2019) links the “severe learning crisis” to what goes on with young children in India. The voluminous policy document points out that close...

-The Pioneer All stakeholders must engage in educating the population about sexual and reproductive health and highlight the multi-sectoral approach that will be necessary for improving adolescent health and breaking inter-generational cycles of disease Investing in adolescent health is essential to realising multiple sustainable development goals set by the UN, to be achieved by 2030. Given that India houses more than 253 million adolescents, it is pertinent to realise that neglecting their...