India’s Public health system has become dysfunctional. There is no reason at all why vector-borne and other infectious diseases should recur with predictable regularity after every monsoon season. Government, especially state and local governments, must take primary responsibility for this malaise. Equally, civil society. A combination of governmental negligence and public apathy contributes to the unacceptably high incidence of diseases like dengue, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis, swine flu, conjunctivitis (eye flu)...

MONA SANGWAN, a teacher at a private school in Delhi, who earns just Rs. 4,000 a month and is her family’s sole earning member, had nearly begun to despair. How on earth was she going to raise Rs. 7,000 every month to buy the medicines her brother Ashwini, a kidney transplant patient, needed? Mona would have continued to despair had not the NGO Sarvohit Social Welfare Society stepped in. And to...

“If countries impose export ban, import duty, there will be an inflationary trend” The outlook for global wheat production is still positive Restrictions can cause inflationary trend on food prices in 2011 and 2012 The drought in Russia and the floods in Pakistan that have affected wheat production will impact food prices as in 2007-08, says a senior official of the World Food Programme. WFP Deputy Executive Director Ramiro Lopes da Silva says: “The...

If the direr predictions are to be believed, it may soon be a case of “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink,” as the effects of global warming and water use patterns combine to make access to good drinking water an issue, especially in developing countries. As another of the many measures initiated to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of ensuring environmental sustainability through access to drinking water and...

It's official now. At the primary healthcare level, there is no difference in the performance of MBBS doctors with five-and-a-half years' training and non-physician clinicians with three years' training who have been called "legal quacks" by the Indian Medical Association (IMA). This has been demonstrated through a study conducted in Chhattisgarh that compared the performance of different types of clinical care providers at the primary care level. Following the controversy...