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Young (and occasionally less young) researchers, mostly from LMICs, present their views on global health issues.
How should we describe the current mood among Non-Governmental Organisations in India? “Unsettled” or “Disgruntled” would be a good start. Good book-keeping, public image and paper work notwithstanding, the factors contributing to this state of being are both insidious and disturbing. The NGO movement in India began a few decades ago d...
Healthcare across the globe is facing a crisis of sorts. Though each country has got its own problems, it may not be incorrect to say that all of them share the problem of affordability. Whether it is the United States, which is spending a whopping 17% of its not inconsiderable GDP on healthcare or any one of the sub-Saharan countries struggli...
ASHA is India’s community health worker. With nearly 900,000 women volunteers across the country, the programme has survived for a decade. Unlike earlier community health worker programmes, it shows little evidence of withering away in the near future. I would like to raise two issues in this piece: One, what made the ASHA sustain over this ...
India suffers disproportionately from the burden of infectious diseases and it accounts for nearly half of India’s disease burden. In 2013, India had 881730 cases of malaria; and every three minutes, two people die of tuberculosis (TB). Many new disease outbreaks such as dengue, swine flu, chikungunya, bird flu have occurred in India over the pa...
The Constitution of India declares India to be a Union of States. There are 29 states and seven union territories, each at different stages of economic and social development. The Constitution also lays out the jurisdictions of the states and the central governments in the form of the State, Union and Concurrent lists. Health for example is a st...
Inequitable access to medicines still remains a challenge in most low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The situation in India is no different. Despite being the largest supplier of generic medicines and often referred to as ‘ the worlds pharmacy’, it is unable to ensure access to medicine to its own people. We are still struggling to imp...
In India you require a license for majority of things, including liquor shops, beauty parlours, pan beeda shops (petty shop usually selling cigarettes, chewable tobacco, paan and candies), handcart pullers and restaurants. Believe it or not, you do not require a license to run a hospital or diagnostic laboratory. This is not without consequence....
This is a longer version of the article that first appeared in the south Indian daily, Deccan Herald on May 26, 2015. It is now a year since a new Government has been sworn. The hunger for change, the restlessness of the youth and the oratorical skills of Sri Narendra Modi paid electoral dividends for the BJP and today the Government will b...
The latest Indian budget (2015) announcement regarding the creation of six additional national-level institutes of excellence, the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has resulted in heated debate. One of the issues being raised is regarding the wisdom of investing in super-specialty institutions at a time when the overall budget fo...