In the remote Raghopur block of Vaishali district in Bihar, the primary health centre (PHC) is supposed to be operational 24X7, with the medical officer in charge (MOIC) running the out-patient department between 8am and 12.30pm. On 8 May, the MOIC reached the PHC at 10.30am and left after an hour. According to patients, this was not a random event. Most of the 20-strong crowd awaiting medical attention is turned away....
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A private intervention by Radhieka Pandeya
By noon daily, the reception area of Surya Clinic in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar begins to fill up. Patients admitted for gyanecological care are clothed in the blue robes of the hospital and ushered into clean rooms with freshly made beds. At the state-run primary health centre (PHC) in Bochahan block of Muzaffarpur, which also offers family planning services, disposable gloves are washed and re-used and rusted beds are covered with...
More »Agri-growth and malnutrition by Ashok Gulati, T Nanda Kumar & Ganga Shreedhar
India has been lauded for its remarkable overall economic growth of over 8% over the last five years. But despite this high and relatively stable growth, India's underbelly is soft. The agriculture sector is performing below expectations, with growth rate of around 2.8%, it is way below the Eleventh Plan target of 4%. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 22% of India's population is undernourished. Child malnutrition is...
More »A watchdog without teeth by Krishnadas Rajagopal
The Lokayukta is the “government’s conscience”, an anti-corruption ombudsman organised at the state-level and born out of a need felt among the country’s statesmen to instill a sense of public confidence in the transparency of the administrative machinery. Legal experts say that the “best and the worst” of the Lokayukta organisation is that the success of the entire mechanism depends solely on the “personal qualities such as the image, caliber, drive,...
More »Janani Sahyogi Yojana to be implemented afresh with new guidelines
A new package has been chalked out for private health institutions with a view to extending the benefit of Janani Sahyogi Yojana to women living below poverty line. Giving this information, Minister for Public Health, Family Welfare, Medical Education and AYUSH Anup Mishra said fees has been determined for pre-natal, natal and post-natal medicare. A first installment of Rs 50 thousand will be given to the private medical institutions with...
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