Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Are missing palm trees causing more lighting deaths in Bihar appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 29.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Are missing palm trees causing …
In recent years, there has been much work done due to increasing recognition that children need better medicines. The United States of America and the European Union have adopted regulations to encourage research and development of medicines for children; the World Health Organization (WHO) has been promoting “Make medicines child …
Noncommunicable diseases pose an increasingly high burden of disease that threatens economic and social development, yet cost-effective health interventions exist. World leaders recognized the compelling case for action with the declaration at the United Nations high level meeting on noncommunicable diseases in September 2011. Since that meeting, the World Health …
It has been 35 years since 1977, when the world observed the last recorded case of naturally occurring smallpox. We had finally defeated a disease that had devastated mankind for centuries. It was a critical victory for the many doctors, scientists and health workers who laboured tirelessly to eradicate this …
India has just won a landmark victory in the long-drawn-out war on polio. Fourteen months have gone since 13 January 2011 without a single case of polio caused by wild poliovirus (WPV). But how sure are we that in this vast country, with about 125 million under-five children and a …
As both a doctor and a public health professional, I am transfixed by one compelling question: Why are public health issues and debates so often limited to just doctors and those with abbreviations like MBBS, MD, MS or MPH added to their names? Does the ambit of health not extend …
The success of smallpox eradication in the mid-1970s drew attention to the immunization programme in India. The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), developed for immunizing children during the first year of life was launched in 1978 mainly in the urban areas. Through the subsequent years, more vaccines were included in …
THE 1993 World Development Report (WDR) was subtitled ‘Investing in Health’ and advanced the argument that better health outcomes facilitate economic development.1 Even if one contests the direction of causation, correlation between better health outcomes and higher levels of economic development is not in doubt.
The health ministry has suggested that the pricing of essential medicines be based on either the average price of the three cheapest brands or the government’s bulk procurement price, rejecting a draft policy of the department of pharmaceuticals. The ministry’s recommendation, made earlier this month, has drawn flak from drug …
This vaccine policy is more about spending and coverage, than about protecting children. It is not designed to enhance national public capacities for public immunization programmes, but to justify spending public money on public private partnerships (PPPs) or privately produced vaccines in the name of protection from diseases, whose incidence …
The World Health Organization is the only body that can promote health through the use of international law. It should make alcohol its next target, says Devi Sridhar.
The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made …
The quality of implementation of the National Rural Health Mission in a number of states has transformed the public healthcare system considerably. Learning from these improvements which have focused on the grass roots, local recruitment is the best way to forge a credible public health system that has public accountability.
Public health policies such as tobacco control, air pollution reduction, and hazardous waste remediation may have reduced cadmium exposure among U.S. adults. However, trends in urine cadmium, a marker of cumulative cadmium exposure, have not been evaluated. The authors estimated the trends in urine cadmium concentrations in U.S. adults using …
Change the current drug policy was the refrain at a meeting of doctors at the KEM Hospital on Wednesday to chart out and discuss the plan of containing the XXDR-TB (extensively drug resistant TB). Presenting his case to a team from Delhi and top city doctors, Dr P Keskar, head …
On August 1, 2011 the movement for banning chewing tobacco in India saw a turn in its favour. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), a statutory body under the health ministry to handle food-related issues, notified a new regulation called the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and …
The AMRI crime is an example of how public safety is being repeatedly compromised. More specifically, it demonstrated the dismal trend of healthcare services being offered by “super specialty care” in public-private partnerships, which has raised the cost of medical treatment to exorbitant levels and deprived the poor of even …
This refers to the paper: “Catastrophic Payments and Impoverishment Due to Out-of-Pocket Health Spending” (19 November 2011) by Soumitra Ghosh. The paper contains some very good analysis of the data on healthcare expenditures in India. We would, however, like to take this opportunity to debate some of the conceptual underpinnings …
Bhutan has achieved a major reduction in malaria incidence amid multiple challenges. This case study seeks to characterize the Bhutan malaria control programme over the last 10 years.
Over several centuries, leprosy had remained a dreaded, incurable disease. Patients were viewed with abhorrence, ostracized and subjected to inhuman treatment. Today, the stigma and prejudice against leprosy have reduced considerably, and the ravages of the disease are rarely seen in the community. This has been possible due the availability …
