-The Telegraph New Delhi: Regulatory efforts to get doctors in India to prescribe medicines only through their generic names, initiated about 15 years ago, will need to overcome legal challenges and resistance from sections of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, experts said. Senior pharmacologists and industry analysts have also said it will be misleading to presume that prescriptions with generic names will automatically translate into lower medicine bills for patients as studies...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government cleared the decks for a fully paper trail-based parliamentary poll on Wednesday, with the Union Cabinet approving release of funds to the Election Commission for procuring 16.15 lakh voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) units in time for the 2019 general election. The expenditure of Rs 3,173 crore on the VVPATs will be split over two financial years, 2017-18 and 2018-19. If the EC...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Activists and researchers today accused the Centre of systematically curtailing the 100-day rural job scheme by not releasing funds for the payment of beneficiaries, diluting norms to avoid giving compensation and cancelling cards of genuine job-seekers. They said payments to around 10 crore poor workers were getting delayed because of the lack of funds. The Union rural development ministry denied the charges. At a news conference, Nikhil Dey of the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Delhi government's policy to subsidise power for households is undoubtedly among the most generous in the country but it is benefiting the rich more than the poor due to inefficiencies. While poor households on an average get subsidy of around Rs 1,000 per year as they consume less electricity, rich households end up benefiting by Rs 9,000 on account of fatter power bills, a Brookings...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A patients' advocacy organisation today urged the Union health ministry to provide free prophylaxis transfusions to an estimated 12,000 to 13,000 children with haemophilia across the country to reduce their long-term risk of developing joint inflammation and damage. The Haemophilia Federation of India, in a petition submitted to the ministry, said many international haemophilia treatment guidelines recommend prophylaxis in affected children, which can help prevent crippling damage to...