-The Indian Express Dr Venugopal, an obstetrician and secretary general of KFOG, said the state's health apparatus showed progress as a result of 'systemic actions' adopted by doctors and government officials. Kochi: Kerala’s superior health infrastructure and its advances in improving delivery care facilities and nutritional level among pregnant women have resulted in further reduction of the maternal mortality rate (MMR) (proportion of maternal deaths per 1 lakh live births) in the...

-The Hindu Doctors say there ought to be an audit of C-section deliveries in private and public health facilities In its new guidelines, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for the elimination of the so-called ‘one-centimetre-per-hour’ benchmark — a rule of thumb that Obstetricians use to determine whether a delivery requires surgical intervention. This is to counter what the body calls a “surge” in interventions such as caesarean sections that could...

-The Hindu Liquid Gold’ may refer to petroleum, an ‘80s pop group or a particularly indulgent variety of cheese but for Raghuram Mallaiah, a doctor who specialises in newborn babies, it’s mother’s milk. As a doctor who has to negotiate life-and-death situations for prematurely-born infants, Dr. Mallaiah holds that breast milk is “10 times more important” for babies born before their due date than those who reach full term. The biological quandary...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: India is facing a debilitating shortage of health specialists, including in basic disciplines such as surgery, gynaecology and paediatrics, statistics compiled by the National Health Mission show. Rural community health centres face over 82 per cent shortage in surgeons, physicians and peadiatricians — 82.5%, 82.6% and 82.2% respectively — and have only 23.4 per cent of the Obstetricians and gynaecologists they require. The story in urban centres is...

-The Times of India Rural positing for six months will soon become compulsory for undergraduate medical students before they get their MBBS degree with the Medical Council of India (MCI) recently presenting the proposal to the health ministry. At present, an MBBS course of 5.5 years includes one year of internship. However, most of these medical students end up practising in urban settings, refusing to serve the country's rural population. The MCI has...