-The Hindu The discourse must move beyond a top-down approach to listen to the people and formulate best insurance practices Much ink has been spilled in documenting the inadequacy of budgetary allocations for public health insurance, specifically for the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the world’s largest publicly-funded health insurance (PFHI) scheme. Though the 2017-18 budget allocation has marginally increased from last year’s revised estimates, it has declined relative to last year’s...

-Business Standard/ India Spend Under-nutrition increases the severity of TB, reduces patients' speed of recovery Mt Abu/Abu Road: One look at Puni Garasia, 14, was all it took Ashok Dave, a doctor operating a charitable mobile clinic service for 56 dusty, desolate hamlets in Sirohi, southwest Rajasthan, to suspect tuberculosis (TB). “She was all skin and bones,” Dave, an employee of Global Hospital & Research Centre, a health not-for-profit, told IndiaSpend. On March 24,...

-The Indian Express Drought for 2nd straight year leaves tribals of Attapaddy at lenders’ mercy, hits pregnant women’s health Attappady: At the sun-baked village of Nallasinka in Attappady, a frail woman is desperately scanning a pipeline that takes water to a private estate, looking for a leak that was once there. “It is five days since water reached our colony. Last week, we survived by collecting water that leaked out of this...

-Scroll.in Arsenic levels in water have been as high as 3,880 parts per billion in parts of the state. Pollution standards cite 50 parts per billion as harmful. It is a day like any other at Mahavir Cancer Sansthan. The driveway is lined with people who have travelled a long way to get to this charitable hospital in Patna. Families sit huddled, holding their bags close. The lobby is even more crowded,...

-Down to Earth The study establishes relation between litchi consumption and encephalitis after conducting a hospital-based surveillance on 390 patients A recent study has linked occurrence of neurological disease—commonly known as encephalitis—to consumption of litchi in Muzaffarpur district in Bihar. Published in Lancet on March 31, the study recommends minimising Litchi consumption and also ensuring that the evening meal is not skipped as the latter modifies the effect of eating litchis on...