-The Hindu An evaluation of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) has concluded that the government-financed health insurance scheme had little or no impact on medical impoverishment in India. In fact, the study found that despite high enrolment in RSBY, catastrophic health expenditures (when medical expenses push a family into poverty), hospitalisation expenditure and the percentage of total household outgo on out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses — medicines and other consumables that are not...

-The Indian Express Indian healthcare providers need to get serious about infection control. A deadly strain of bacterium has doubled its resistance to last-resort antibiotics within a year, according to the report “State of the World’s Antibiotics, 2015”. By an estimate, antimicrobial resistance — the ability of bugs to outwit antibiotics — will claim two million lives in India by 2050, a fifth of the total. India is under pressure to curb...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: More than seven out of ten Indians lack in vitamins, and most of them suffer from vitamin D deficiency that is linked to Alzheimer's disease, prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction and schizophrenia. Chennai-based Metropolis Healthcare studied 14,96,683 samples over three years and found an increasing trend of deficiency in vitamin D, vitamin B12 and vitamin B9 (Folic Acid) among all age groups of Indians. The samples tested across four...

-The Times of India NOIDA: The National Cancer Institute (NCI), a unit of US Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS), has observed that India shares a large proportion of the global cancer burden, with rising mortality rates. The situation can improve with dissemination of scientific information among the general populace, claimed NCI officials. India has around 1.8 million people suffering from cancer, with patients of breast, cervical and oral cancers topping...

-The Indian Express Decades of mismanagement have hobbled India’s mental health programme An event commemorating World Mental Health week opened at the WHO in Geneva this week. At a key session, the Disease Control Priorities project released its recommendations to governments to address the burden of mental disorders. This was timely for India, for few countries have witnessed so many high-profile debates related to mental health while ignoring the centrality of mental health...