-TheWire.in Conditionalities related to utilising health services do not make any sense in the absence of a service guarantee, and only serve to blame the victims and not the system for its failures. Nearly six months after the prime minister announced maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 to pregnant and lactating mothers, the cabinet yesterday approved the implementation of the maternity benefits programme (MBP) – a scheme that will likely exclude a large...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI/ MUMBAI: India continues to be one of the poor performers ranking at 154, much below China, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh, in terms of quality and accessibility of healthcare, according to the new Global Burden of Disease study published in the Lancet. The study points that despite the country's socio-economic development, India has failed to achieve in healthcare goals and the gap between the score and...

-Hindustan Times A report on sugar price policy for 2015-16 by union agriculture ministry had highlighted that Maharashtra’s sugarcane cultivation, which is less than 4% of the total cropped area, consumes 70% of water needed for irrigation Following criticism over sugarcane crop guzzling potable water, particularly in drought-prone Marathwada, the state government is set to introduce a policy for shifting 50% of sugarcane farming on drip irrigation in the next two years. Statistics...

-The Hindu By 2040, 12.4% of patients in the country will have that variant, reports Lancet A month after the Health Ministry set itself the target of eliminating tuberculosis (TB) by 2025, a new study in the medical journal Lancet says that India’s TB crisis is likely to get worse. According to the latest issue of the journal, Multidrug Resistant-Tuberculosis (MDR-TB), a version of the disease where patients do not respond to first-line...

-The Indian Express The Indian Express travels down the meat value chain in Uttar Pradesh to find a seamless system that’s now under strain. FOR Puran Chand Sharma, dealing with Mohammad Sabir Qureshi is a twice or maybe thrice-a-year affair. But this transactional relationship is essential to sustaining his dairy farm operation involving 10 female buffaloes — three now in-milk, two pregnant animals, two young yet-to-calve heifers, and three one-year-old calves. “The ones...