-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union health ministry will on Thursday launch the third phase of a vaccination campaign to cover an estimated 36 lakh children in 216 districts across India who have never received vaccines or remain partially immunised. The campaign designed to immunise children against seven vaccine-preventable diseases - diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis-B - will focus on areas dogged by irregular or poor routine immunisation...

-The Hindu India’s UIP will now be able to provide free vaccines against 13 life-threatening diseases to 27 million children annually India has made huge strides as far as public health achievements are concerned, made possible by the use of safe and effective vaccines delivered through quality programmes. For example, small pox was eliminated in 1975, polio in 2014 and maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) in August 2015. While India has shown its...

-IANS Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda on Thursday said there was a need to set up a special task force comprising both government and private healthcare sectors to ensure quality healthcare for every citizen of India. "Our vision is to provide universal healthcare coverage despite several challenges in the health sector. It can better be done by a special task force comprising the ministry and representatives of private healthcare sector," Nadda said. He...

-The Hindu Why New Delhi must not bask in the WHO’s polio-free certification and, instead, have an ambitious plan to eradicate polio-like flaccid paralysis. On November 30, the day India introduced an Injectable Polio Vaccine (IPV) in its routine immunisation programme, stating that it “will be an important step in the Polio Endgame Strategy”, a case of Vaccine Derived Polio Virus (VDPV) was reported from New Delhi. This was the second such...

-The Hindu Business Line How the Indian State metamorphosed from protector of the poor to facilitator of the private health industry If there is correlation between two incidents of the Central Government announcing cuts in the health budget and dengue patients being refused treatment in Delhi’s private hospitals, it is rarely discussed in the ongoing media debate on the subject. A new collection of researched essays edited by public health scholar Imrana...