Like the fight against poverty and hunger, the progress made by mankind against tuberculosis (TB) in the years up to 2019 has either slowed, stalled, or reversed, and global TB targets are off track due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, although the reported number of people newly diagnosed with TB decreased from 7.1 million to 5.8 million between 2019 and 2020, the number went up to 6.4 million in 2021....

-Hindustan Times On November 15, Boston-based health news website Stat News cited official documents that purported to detail a series of problems in how Bharat Biotech’s coronavirus vaccine, funded partly by the government, was approved. The Union government and vaccine maker Bharat Biotech on Thursday refuted a report that alleged rules and protocols were bent during the approval process for Covaxin, but the clarifications served to further add to the questions that...

-The Telegraph The state government has neither made public the total number of dengue cases this year nor the number of deaths it caused Disregard for data, letting the large volunteer force created for Covid disappear following a sharp drop in cases, failure to spread awareness, love for denial.  The wild spread of dengue across West Bengal has bared lapses in the government’s combat strategy and the failure of health officials to learn...

-The Telegraph State had reported only 1,753 cases and three deaths to National Center for Vector Borne Diseases Control till June Calcutta: The Bengal government is not releasing figures on dengue deaths or the exact area-wise demarcation of zones reporting the maximum number of cases, ostensibly to avoid panic. However, several public health experts contested the purported justification, saying clear communication would be far better to fight a public health scare than the...

-Newsclick.in In the past five years, agri workers’ wage has increased by only about Rs.15 per year. For those leaders of the country who are tearing their hair trying to figure out how to get the economy moving, boost growth, increase investment and create jobs, it would be instructive to look at the plight of the largest economic class in the country – agricultural labourers. Numbering upward of 14 crore, they are...