-The Hindu Workshop held on recommendations of high-level panel Abolition of user fee in hospitals, 24X7 availability of healthcare services, a universal system to provide health care to all those who need it, free supply of medicines, and a strong grievance redressal mechanism. These are some of the demands that evolved out of a workshop on universal access to health care organised by Janaarogya Andolana Karnataka (JAAK) here on Wednesday. Following the recommendations of...

What is the point of having a great GDP if as a society we are unhealthy? I am a bit of a dreamer. I dream that one day we will be living in a country where things will be different, and where the rich and the poor will both get the same, good, quality health care. To many it may seem like a totally impractical, and an unachievable dream. But it's...

A parliamentary panel has cited the practice in developed countries to reject a key provision in the land acquisition bill allowing the government to acquire plots for private companies. The committee said in the US, Japan and Canada, land is purchased by private enterprises, not acquired by the state. Why should India continue this “anomalous practice”, asked the parliamentary standing committee on rural development in its report on the Land Acquisition,...

A parliamentary panel has sought to put strict safeguards on the government’s powers to acquire land and recommended that no plot under cultivation be taken away unless as a last resort. The recommendation — one of many on the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 — seeks to give a leg-up to food security, but if accepted, could pose a challenge to the expansion of industries. “The concept of food security...

-The Business Standard Still waiting for a crackdown on antibiotic over-prescription According to a recent study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, the drug-resistant bacterial strain known as New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1, or NDM-1, has spread to 40 countries. This is quite remarkable, given that it was only discovered in 2008 in the UK, among patients who had recently been hospitalised in India. The “superbug”, as it is commonly known, is...