-The Telegraph New Delhi: One in five patients in India treated for heart attacks had to pay over a third of their annual household income from their pockets despite health insurance, according to a study that doctors say highlights poor health care protection. The study probing the financial impacts of serious acute coronary events in a sample of 1,635 patients from 41 hospitals across the country has also found that 60 per...

-Observer Research Foundation It is not often discussed in India that there was a time, not too far into the past, when the doctors from the famous All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) performed and promoted sex-selective abortions as an effective and ethical method to address India’s population problem. Some of them even suggested that “the couple keeps on reproducing just to have a son”, and prenatal determination of sex...

-The Indian Express If the government does not have the will to regulate 55,000 pre-natal diagnostic clinics, how will it track 29 million pregnancies annually? I was inspired by Maneka Gandhi’s struggle to get back her passport (impounded by the Janata Party government) as an IIT student in 1977. Her Supreme Court case led to a landmark judgment on personal liberty. Subsequently Gandhi filed petitions in courts to protect animal rights....

-Economic and Political Weekly Anant Phadke (anant.phadke@gmail.com) is associated with the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the People’s Health Movement in India. The issue of regulation of doctors and private hospitals is one that is increasingly becoming important for the citizen. The attempts by professional medical associations to scuttle the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act of 2010 is the context for this essay on the issues that afflict the provision of private healthcare....

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a move that will benefit over 27 crore children across the country, the health ministry has expanded its deworming programme to convert it into a national initiative seeking to cover as many as 536 districts over the next one year. The programme was earlier limited to 277 districts in 11 high-burden states, and covered nine crore children in 2015. The government has decided to ramp...