A high-level team of doctors and scientists today visited the paediatrics ward of Anugrah Narayan Medical College and Hospital (ANMCH) in Gaya and scanned the case records of children suspected to be suffering from Japanese and acute encephalitis. Its members also inspected the treatment methods on the concluding day of their three-day investigation. The team of members from Delhi, Pune and Patna was in Gaya to carry out on-the-spot study of...

India recorded 9.8 lakh new cases of cancer last year, an increase of about 80,000 new cases as compared to 2009. Top cancer scientists from across the country along with Union health ministry officials and experts from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) met at the annual review meeting of the National Cancer Registry Programme in Guwahati to discuss the worrying trend over the last two days. This figure was...

About 9% of the country's population comprises scheduled tribes, with over 700 communities, of which 75 are 'primitive tribal groups'. Yet, we found on a number of field trips to Andhra Pradesh, conditions among scheduled and primitive tribes differ according to policy whims, and little else. In a village in Vijanagaram district, we found two distinct tribes living side by side: Kondavara, a scheduled tribe, and Savara, a primitive tribe. The...

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 bidirectional relationship between economic development and health justifies greater investment in the health sector. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has been described as one of the largest and most ambitious programmes to revive health care in the world and has many achievements to its credit. It seeks to provide universal access to health care, which is affordable, equitable, and of good quality. It has increased health finance, improved infrastructure...