Number of centres to be frozen There are nearly 2,300 PHCs in the State Freezing the number will help improve the PHCs Ten of the 30 districts in the State have very poor healthcare services while an equal number of districts have good facilities. Given the need to streamline the system, the State Government has decided to freeze the number of Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and utilise the available funds for improving the...
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Long way to go by PS Krishnan
Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...
More »Antibiotic challenges, dilemmas, policies by KS Jacob
India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction. India was recently in the news for the wrong reasons. The serious threat posed by the newly discovered microbe, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo--lactamase-1), resistant to many antibiotics, triggered alarm and panic. Predictions that the country will not meet the millennium development goal for child mortality caused dismay....
More »Binayak moves SC against HC decision by Dhananjay Mahapatra
People's Union for Civil Liberties leader and paediatrician Binayak Sen on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking bail in a Maoist-linked sedition case, in which he has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Sen's petition challenges a February 10 decision of the Chhattisgarh High Court refusing bail during the pendency of his appeal against conviction and sentence. A Raipur additional district and sessions court had on December 24 convicted Sen and Kolkata businessman...
More »Not out of the woods yet by Ashish Kothari
The promise of the FRA remains largely unfulfilled, says a committee set up by the Ministries of Environment and Forests and Tribal Affairs. IT seems hard for a government used to controlling most of India's common lands to let go of them. Even though it has passed a law mandating more decentralised governance of forests, the government itself is proving to be the biggest obstacle in its implementation. Other than in...
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