-The Times of India   India is planning to make its undergraduate MBBS course six-and-a-half years long, instead of the present five-and-a-half years.  In a meeting on Saturday, health ministerGhulam Nabi Azad and the Medical Council of India (MCI) discussed amending the MCI Actthat would make a one-year rural posting compulsory for all MBBS students before they can become doctors. The proposal was first mooted by former health minister A Ramadoss in 2007.  Speaking...

Carrying forward from the opening of a school in Hamidpur Char & enrolling 378 children on Thursday, for whom education had been a distant dream come true, it was the day for yet another batch of 136 children enrolled in to a newly setup school in the age group of 6-8 yrs of Narayanpur Char in Manichak Block of Malda District, also visited by the 5 member Team of NCPCR...

There are fears that curative health care will be left to the private sector, while the public system will handle preventive and low-quality care. AN issue of The Lancet earlier this year highlighted some of the problems with public health in India, acknowledging that “it is in crisis”. The robust economic growth over the past 20 years has not translated into better health indices; indeed the decline of infant and child...

The flagship programmes of the UPA government in the social sector have had little impact. Spending has been between 25 and 75 per cent in many schemes like the Indira Awas Yojana, the rural housing scheme, the rural electrification scheme and the rural health programme. Irrigation statistics have come under scrutiny. Some education initiatives have managed to achieve physical targets but several NGOs have raised issues concerning the quality. National Rural Employment...

Four infants died in Lucknow after they were given anti-measles vaccine The team will ascertain whether the vaccines were spurious or there were procedural lapses It will probe whether Auxiliary Nurse-Midwives were trained to administer the vaccine The Centre has sent a two-member team to Lucknow to probe the deaths of four infants after they were administered anti-measles vaccination at an immunisation camp in the Mohanlal Ganj area. “Most stringent action will be taken...