-Down to Earth Health experts blame Centre's over-emphasis on women's sterilisation for the Chhattisgarh tragedy THERE WAS nothing right about the sterilisation camp held on November 8 in Chhattisgarh's Takhatpur block of Bilaspur district. An overambitious government doctor-with unsterilised equipment and virtually no manpower-set out to conduct laparoscopic tubectomy on 83 women in an abandoned private hospital. The mass sterilisation led to the death of 13 women and left others critically ill. They were...

-PTI New Delhi: Three out of five people feel unsafe on Indian roads, says a survey conducted in 12 cities of the country including the four metros. During the survey, the general public expressed strong support for the Road Transport and Safety Bill, 2014 and expressed hope that roads will become safer. "81 per cent of all respondents "strongly favor" passing of the proposed road safety Bill and 90 per cent believe that...

-FirstPost.com The MGNREGA rural job programme and other social welfare schemess will take a significant hit due to the 15 percent budget cut that the ministry of finance is believed to have proposed recently, social activists said Saturday. "You (the government) cut fund allocations from social and development programmes and then talk of development. That is so wrong. Such notion is misplaced and insulting," said Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Some multinational companies (MNCs) have been delaying the launch of life-saving drugs in India years after getting monopoly rights, while cheaper generic versions of exorbitantly-priced medicines are going off the shelves under the product patenting law. Corporates such as Japanese firm Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, US-based Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS) and Swiss firm Novartis are deferring the launch of medicines critical for treatment of serious non-communicable diseases like cancer, HIV,...

-Business Standard India's mixed record on the Millennium Development Goals is a pointer to policy priorities In 2000, the United Nations held a Millennium Summit, at which the membership adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Spanning a range of development indicators - poverty, gender, health, education and the environment - the MDGs essentially established a set of targets for the global community to achieve by 2015. The framework sets eight broad...