-Economic and Political Weekly Since independence, India's national health policies have been aspirational but the end results have been limited. The National Health Policy 2015, which is in the process of being finalised, should, in place of the earlier "broadband" approach, adopt a "narrow focus" on primary healthcare through the National Rural Health Mission. The latter has focused on primary healthcare and has shown visible results. A slew of suggestions as...

-PTI   In an alarming news about the quality of air in Delhi, a survey has found the deadly PM2.5 levels in the national capital was 10 times higher than the safety limit prescribed by the World Health Organisation. Air quality monitoring survey conducted by Greenpeace inside five prominent schools in the city also found that the PM2.5 levels were four times more against the prescribed Indian safety limits. "The real-time monitoring data from...

-Economic and Political Weekly The release of the independent Annual Status of Education Report has become an annual event, bringing attention to the status of learning amongst children in rural India. An examination of the 2014 report looks at the representation of data within the binary of government vs private schooling, as well as the silence of the report on the quality of private schools, and highlights the need to move...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Despite the botched Chhattisgarh sterilization the number of women who underwent sterilization surgery increased by 36% even as male sterilizations dropped to below 25% last year. According to health ministry data accessed through RTI the number of female sterilizations has increased from 30.22 lakh in 2012-2013 to 41.28 lakh in 2013-2014. Male sterilizations-which were already low-dropped further from 1.20 lakh to 91,652 in the same period. A...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: International health activists have joined their Indian counterparts in decrying what they say are Barack Obama's dual policy on big drug companies, pledging to break their stranglehold in the US but promoting their interests in India. The activists claimed yesterday that the India-US joint statement, issued during Obama's visit to India, contains signals that the Indian government could be preparing to weaken its intellectual property regulations on medicines,...