-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Almost 80% of government-run hospitals in Delhi, which together have a daily footfall of about 50,000, do not have basic fire safety measures in place. Overcrowding, lack of trained manpower and poor maintenance are other problems that put the city’s hospitals at risk. At least 20 people were killed and scores injured in a fire that broke out at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, on Monday night. “In government...

-The Hindu ‘Cost of an inpatient episode is much higher in private sector’ Bulk of the total public money spent in State-level healthcare system is not spent on medical services, but goes to wages and salaries of human resource, reveals a study of health accounts of six States. Wages and salaries account for 86 per cent of the total public expenditure in Punjab, 72 per cent in Maharashtra, 65 per cent in Kerala,...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The CBSE wants to ensure that teachers in private schools are not saddled with non-teaching work, a common complaint across the country, and will in coming days ask these institutes for Staff details. The Central Board of Secondary Education, the country’s biggest school board, would issue a circular to all the around 16,000 private schools affiliated it to it to give information about the work assigned to the...

-The Hindu The Global TB Report 2016, recently released, has revised the estimates for the tuberculosis (TB) burden in India upwards. The country has 27 per cent of the global burden of incident tuberculosis and 34 per cent of global TB deaths. For the year 2015, the updated estimate of incidence (new and relapse TB cases per year) is 2.8 million cases. India diagnosed and notified 1.7 million incident TB patients...

-The Hindu The overcrowding of prisons in the country is a long-standing problem that is seldom addressed effectively. Even though the Supreme Court has, from time to time, raised the issue of prison reforms in general, and that of overcrowding in particular, measures to decongest jails have been sporadic and half-hearted. The issue is once again in the news, with the Supreme Court bemoaning that prisons in Delhi and nine States...