Lack of appropriate services at the healthcare facilities led to three maternal deaths in one block of Deoghar district of Jharkhand while seven others died due to lack of back up emergency facilities during delivery and mechanisms to deal with postpartum complications. These maternal deaths were reported from Devipur block between march 2010 and February this year.   A Maternal Death Audit conducted by the Network for Enterprise, Enhancement and Development...

While Indian psychiatrists have rejected a World Health Organisation (WHO) study portraying India as the depression capital of the world, they say it has indirectly drawn attention to an acute shortage of trained personnel and facilities to deal with mental illness. "Declaring India as having the highest rate of major depression in the world is an aberration in interpretation," Dr. Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, secretary-general of the World Association of Social Psychiatry,...

The finance ministry has asked the telecom department not to entrust state-owned BSNL with the Rs 20,000-crore project to build a nationalbroadband network to take high-speed internet to the hinterlands. It has recommended that a special purpose vehicle (SPV), consisting of many mobile phone companies, be entrusted with implementing this project, while adding that all stakeholders should be chosen through a transparent and competitive bidding process. The telecom department had identified...

I have been asked by my many friends to give my views on the recent ongoing movement against the corruption and Jan Lokpal Bill. Here in this article, I would like to present a young Dalit’s view to this bill and this recent movement. I may disappoint many of you especially those who think that bringing Lokpal Bill will solve the problem of corruption from India (yes, we rank very...

-IANS   A central team that reviewed fund management under the National Rural Health Mission in Uttar Pradesh found ‘irregularity’ in award of contracts for procuring emergency medical transport services and poor quality of drugs, the Rajya Sabha was informed Tuesday. In a written reply, Minister of State Sudip Bandyopadhyay said Uttar Pradesh has ‘primary responsibility’ for implementing NRHM that aims to provide quality healthcare to people living in remote areas. The central health...