-The Hindu Business Line The manner in which alternating wet and dry spells trigger disease and Morbidity needs to be better understood Monsoon fury was in full display this year with record floods over Kerala as well as widespread floods from Gujarat to the North-East. The season also produced a wide swathe of drought that covered much of peninsular India with a smattering of districts from Gujarat to the eastern regions and...

-The Hindu Business Line The Ayushman Bharat programme must aim to reverse poverty caused by healthcare expenses The state of India’s healthcare system is somewhat dichotomous — the country is a global supplier of life-saving, affordable and good quality generic medicines, yet lakhs of families are driven into poverty because they are forced to spend much of their earnings and savings on medications to treat chronic and life-threatening diseases. The poor, particularly,...

-The Indian Express Closure of Sterlite plant says something about our collective morality: Death, violence move governments more than reason and evidence It took a brazen exercise of what sociologists since Max Weber refer to as the state’s “monopoly of violence” by Tamil Nadu authorities to bring our attention to a problem that had been affecting the local residents of Tuticorin for over two decades. Since this tragic incident, it took hardly...

-The Hindu What is the report? The India State-Level Disease Burden report, a first-of-its-kind assessment of causes for diseases in each State from 1990 to 2016, was released recently. A team of scientists evaluated the diseases causing the most premature deaths and ill-health in each State. It found out, for instance, that life expectancy at birth in the country has improved significantly. What is worrying? However, the report indicated many health inequalities among States,...

-Down to Earth A study conducted in public health centres in Uttar Pradesh shows complying to essential childbirth practices did not significantly alter maternal and perinatal mortality & maternal Morbidity Despite improvements in the quality of care during labour and delivery, checklists and coaching interventions failed to reduce maternal and neonatal deaths during childbirth, shows a study published on December 14 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was conducted...