-IANS   Suspected encephalitis, which causes irritation and swelling of the brain, has claimed the lives of 85 children in Bihar's Gaya district in the last two-and-a-half months, with two more succumbing to the disease Thursday, an official said. 'Two more children died on Thursday,' an official said. The children reported high fever, followed by bouts of unconsciousness and convulsions. Most of the children belong to poor families. The first encephalitis-related death in the...

-The Times of India The Centre on Thursday responded to the Supreme Court's concern over spiralling prices of essential medicines and promised to make all-out efforts to put under strict price control regime all the 348 drugs included in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), 2011. A bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya had, in the last hearing, expressed concern over the shrinking list of medicines under...

-The Telegraph   The Supreme Court today asked the Centre to ensure that drug prices go down, not up, if and when a new price control policy comes into force. “Prices may go down but should not go up because of policy,” Justice S.J. Mukhopadhyay, sitting alongside senior judge G.S. Singhvi, said. “Bring it down, don’t escalate it in the name of policy,” the bench told additional solicitor-general Parag Tripathi, who was speaking...

-The Hindu   Two cotton farmers, one of them a primitive tribesman, committed suicide in Adilabad district on Thursday owing to failure of crop this season. According to the police, K. Bheem Rao, a 42-year-old Kolam farmer from Sadalpur in Bela mandal, consumed poison in his field on Wednesday night perturbed over failure of the crop in his four acres of land. He is reported to have incurred a debt of Rs. 1 lakh. He...

Health is a state of mental, social and physical well-being and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity. To achieve this noble objective, India requires health care professionals who are trained in institutions with standardised infrastructure, and the availability of accessible and equitable health care for both the rural and urban populace. Recently, the health sector has been in the news — from the creation of a rural based...