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 …
The enrolment of the poor in the flagship health insurance scheme, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana in its third year of operation does not show any sign of it covering all the poor by 2012. This article estimates the proportion of the eligible below the poverty line families enrolled for …
The story of how pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) in the recent swine flu scare and the saga of the undeclared conflicts of interests of members of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts has set off alarm bells around the world. …
India had the largest number of malnourished children in the world. Our figures were worse than sub Saharan Africa. For me as for many others, India's high growth rate loses its sheen when, despite all the resources allocated to it, malnutrition could not be handled and brought down in any …
When the United Progressive Alliance (upa) triumphed at the hustings exactly a year ago, both its supporters and detractors agreed the victory vindicated the government’s social welfare schemes. The upa, in its first avatar, brought a new lease of life in many areas of the social welfare sector. It discarded …
Jayamma’s uterus was removed two years ago—she was 18. Married at 12, she had children at 15 and 17 and she did not know she would undergo uterus removal surgery (hysterectomy) when she went to a doctor for pain in her lower abdomen. The doctor, in a pr-ivate hospital in …
Solving the predicaments facing women is a crucial development objective. But it is also a neglected instrument for health. Women and girls make up 60% of the world's poorest people and two-thirds of the world's illiterate people. Yet, with education and empowerment, they can lead healthy lives, lift themselves and …
Although progress has been made to reduce global incidence of drug-susceptible tuberculosis, the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis during the past decade threatens to undermine these advances. However, countries are responding far too slowly. Of the estimated 440 000 cases of MDR tuberculosis that occurred in …
Rapid expansion of the standardised approach to tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment that is recommended by WHO allowed more than 36 million people to be cured between 1995 and 2008, averting up to 6 million deaths. Yet tuberculosis remains a severe global public health threat. There are more than 9 million …
This PLoS Medicine Debate examines the different approaches that can be taken to tackle neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Some commentators, like Jerry Spiegel and colleagues from the University of British Columbia, feel there has been too much focus on the biomedical mechanisms and drug development for NTDs, at the expense …
How can healthcare be made equitably accessible to every individual, no matter the circumstances of geography, employment, income, wealth, age, gender, occupation and the ability to exercise autonomous choices? An outline of the steps that must be taken to move towards healthcare for all.
In 2006 seven foreign ministers from Brazil, France, Indonesia, Norway, Senegal, South Africa, and Thailand initiated a dialogue on the inter-linkages between health and foreign policy, with a focus on how health matters to foreign policy and whether foreign policy can make a difference to health. What brought the ministers …
Maternal mortality remains a major challenge to health systems worldwide. Reliable information about the rates and trends in maternal mortality is essential for resource mobilisation, and for planning and assessment of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), the target for which is a 75% reduction in the maternal …
The apparent failure to reduce maternal mortality during 20 years of the Safe Motherhood movement has been one of the most deforming scars on the body of global health. Despite strong advocacy efforts, political leaders have either ignored the call or failed to make the health of women in pregnancy …
How can we best advance the collective health of the United States, while monitoring our progress? This year offers another opportunity to revisit this fundamental yet profound question through the lens of the Healthy People initiative. In setting the country
Many international statements have urged researchers, policy-makers and health care providers to collaborate in efforts to bridge the gaps between research, policy and practice in low- and middle-income countries. We surveyed researchers in 10 countries about their involvement in such efforts. The authors surveyed 308 researchers who conducted research on …
Gaps continue to exist between research-based evidence and clinical practice. We surveyed health care pro viders in 10 low- and middle-income countries about their use of research-based evidence and examined factors that may facilitate or impede such use. The authors surveyed 1499 health care providers practising in one of four …
