-The Indian Express Under the plan, the state governments will identify the clusters in accordance with the framework for implementation prepared by the Ministry of Rural Development. In a bid to transform rural areas to economically, socially and physically sustainable spaces, the Cabinet Wednesday approved the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (SPMRM) with an outlay of Rs 5,142.08 crore to set up 300 rural clusters across the country by 2019-20. “The mission...

-The Hindu Rescuing Maternal and Child Health-only systems, which have become under-resourced and have built a very high-cost but low-performance culture, will be a challenging task. Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, there is an increasing demand to build health systems that can address these concerns. However, given how large the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals is, the Indian government has chosen to stay focussed on Maternal and Child...

-Economic and Political Weekly The draft National Health Policy 2015 is an improvement over its predecessors--the policies of 1984 and 2002. However, it also reveals several gaps, inconsistencies and blind spots which tend to dilute otherwise constructive proposals. The purpose of this article is to open up the draft to further public debate and comment. Forum for Medical Ethics Society (fmesmumbai@gmail.com) is a voluntary, non-profit organisation registered in Mumbai. The society was...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India has set itself a challenging target to reduce maternal mortality rate to 70 per 1000 live births, and for neonatal and under-five to 12 and 25 per 1,000 births respectively under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved over the next 15 years. The consensus over the new targets was achieved within the government in a recent meeting of the health ministry and other...

-HuffingtonPost.in In the foothills of the Himalayas, on the outskirts of Dehradun in a town called Rajpur, sits a bustling network of co-operatives strung together by a family of American social entrepreneurs. If one is fortunate enough to venture to this specific community in India, one would never guess that hundreds of jobs are being supported in different pockets by the Murray's desire to create opportunity for artisans with challenging lives....