-The Times of India BHOPAL (M.P.): Without an Aadhaar registration, new-borns in Bhopal's Sultania hospital are being refused discharge. In no uncertain terms, a dictate by hospital administration, instructs hospital staff, ward in-charge and security guards, not to allow new-borns to leave hospital premises unless registration unique ID is produced. The need for 12-digit unique Aadhaar number for babies born is pasted across the largest maternity hospital in Madhya Pradesh. "These instructions...

-The Indian Express Budget’s bias toward privately-delivered care undermines universal health coverage Until about four decades ago, specialist healthcare (secondary and tertiary care) was largely a province of public Hospitals, and the private sector largely kept itself to the provision of generalist healthcare. This underwent a transformation with the rise of the advanced medical interventions comprising tertiary-care medicine like organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Given these highly-profitable medical advances, the private...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Even as stent prices have been capped, the cost of the three main consumables used in angioplasty have, in many cases, become even more expensive than stents as Hospitals try to make up for the huge margins they lost on stents. The modus operandi is same as in the case of stents before the price cap. Though the consumables are bought at a third or less...

-The Hindu The National Health Protection Scheme is disconnected from primary care. It also needs to be scaled up It is unusual for a health programme to become the most prominent feature of a Union Budget. The previous government missed the bus when it failed to implement the recommendations of the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage (2011). Yet, those recommendations resonate in the Budget of 2018, with commitment to universal...

-The Indian Express The focus in the Union Budget on tertiary healthcare at the cost of primary and secondary healthcare is flawed. A publicly-financed health insurance scheme is no substitute If the past three Union budgets were any indication, this budget’s approach to the health sector should not have surprised anyone. The prescription in the National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 to increase the government’s (Centre and the states together) health expenditure from the...