-The Hindu Health workers need better remuneration and safety guarantee, not just awards Recognition very often goes to those at the top of the pecking order, and stays there. Credit seldom trickles down to the worker at the bottom. The World Health Organization’s act of recognising India’s ASHA (accredited social health activists) and the polio workers of Afghanistan is an attempt to right that wrong. It is a rare, and commendable doffing...

-The Hindu Business Line Large inter-State variations in funding, shortcomings in quality of care and neglect of urban health continue to haunt the sector Since Independence, India has made some notable gains on the health front. For instance, life expectancy at birth has increased, infant mortality and crude death rates have fallen steeply, diseases such as smallpox, polio and guinea worm have been eradicated, and Leprosy is on the verge of getting...

-The Telegraph Late treatment raises risk of deformities: Study Several thousand Leprosy patients in India are diagnosed with preventable deformities each year because they fail to recognise symptoms or receive delayed treatment, health researchers have cautioned, 13 years after India declared the disease had been “eliminated”. A study covering Bengal and four other states has found that Leprosy patients who delayed seeking medical advice by at least three months or whose healthcare providers...

-DNAIndia.com NEW DELHI: In an order that is likely to have wider ramifications, the central information commission has directed the CBI to disclose details of a case it had investigated. Dismissing the agency’s contention of being exempt from RTI requests under section 24 of the RTI Act, the CIC said the CBI had “grossly erred” in invoking exemption under sections of the RTI Act. It directed that the information be shared with...

-The Telegraph Govt. views detection as a sign of better disease management The rise in the number of recorded Leprosy cases from 86,147 (in 2013-14) to 90,709 (2017-18), reported a decade and a half after India was declared Leprosy-free in 2005, has turned the spotlight on the hotspots for the disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has set the goal of zero children with Leprosy and deformities by 2020, and less than one...