-The Hindu Business Line India’s over-dependence on private players for vaccines is promoting irrational use and restricting access that leads to unacceptable fatalities The death of an eight-year-old girl, Anju, this August after denial of anti-rabies vaccine at Agra’s Sarojini Naidu Medical College (SNMC) is followed by the admission by Health Ministry that fatality rate for rabies in India is 100 per cent. Although the circumstance of Anju’s death is particularly Kafkaesque...

  The newly released Global Tuberculosis Report 2019 finds that among the five risk factors behind TB cases in the country, undernourishment posed the greatest risk. Close to 7 lakh TB cases in India could be attributable to undernourishment during 2018. The other four risk factors behind TB cases were alcohol consumption (around 3 lakh TB cases), smoking (nearly 2 lakh TB cases), diabetes (more than 1 lakh TB cases) and HIV...

-The Indian Express With a virtually unregulated private health system, an increase in notification of TB Patients could be heartening for the government. But for the public health system, it is bad news. Over the last month or so, we saw some important documentation on India’s public health. The Annual India Tuberculosis (TB) report was released by the government on September 26. India is now home to about a quarter of...

-The Indian Express Traditional wisdom is that because women are less likely to be breadwinners, especially in families of limited means (who are primarily the targeted PMJAY beneficiaries), families are more reluctant to pay for their treatment. One year into Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), heart surgery data from the tertiary care arm of Ayushman Bharat show a gender skew, with women comprising just 29 per cent of total hospital...

-The Telegraph It will be available free to below-poverty-line patients and at a cost to the rest The Union health ministry has decided to provide peritoneal dialysis, a home-based alternative to haemodialysis that typically requires thrice weekly hospital visits, to patients with end-stage kidney disease across India under the National Dialysis Programme. It will be available free to below-poverty-line patients and at a cost to the rest, just as haemodialysis is under the...