Health issues in India
Toxic alcohol has potentially killed more than a hundred people in India. The suspected cause? The illegally produced alcohol was ‘laced with methanol’. This incident, like the many others involving bootleg alcohol before it, has been likened by some to a massacre. Personal accounts paint a horrific scene Pintu Kumar, a farmhand in northern […]
Parents of children affected with thalassemia in Telangana have hit back at a new policy reducing health benefits for families battling the disease. Thalassemia is a genetically inherited blood disorder. With between 10,000 and 12,000 children are born with the disease every year, India is believed to be home to forty million people who l […]
Bengaluru’s early summer has brought with it a chickenpox outbreak – and children are being hit the hardest. Hospitals across the city are reporting an increase in admissions with chickenpox cases. Dr S. M. Prasad of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics has noted “chickenpox cases see a rise as summer sets in” and says limited […]
Doctors’ strikes in multiple Indian states are hitting public and private hospitals alike. A strike by private doctors in Uttarakhand is forcing many patients to turn to government hospitals for treatment. The week-long strike has resulted in public health facilities becoming overburdened by a sudden spike in demand. The issue has come to the attention […]
The Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Warangal, Telangana is the city’s largest government-run hospital – and it’s in crisis. Shortages of staff and equipment plague the facility. In recent weeks, the situation has forced emergency meetings to be held between hospital officials and Hospital Development Society (HDS) officials. Present included the hospital’s superintendent Dr B. […]
Haryana is now home to a state-of-the-art National Cancer Institute (NCI), following an unveiling by the Prime Minister on Tuesday. The Institute was one of six health-related development projects Prime Minister Modi inaugurated while attending ‘Swachh Shakti 2019’ events in the state. Swachh Shakti commemorates the role of women working in rural areas of the […]
Public hospitals in the national capital are struggling with a frightening shortage of ventilators. Health Issues India recently highlighted the story of Farhan, a three-year-old boy suffering from a rare disorder called Leigh syndrome. The hospital treating him lacked a spare ventilator. This forced the boy’s family to manually ventilate him, by pumping air into […]
Just days after its launch, the Delhi government’s ‘ambulances on bikes’ initiative has hit a legal roadblock following a suit filed in the Delhi High Court. Seventy percent of the staff manning the bikes – known as ‘first responder vehicles’ (FRVs) – are not trained paramedics, claims the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by petitioner […]
India may have officially eliminated leprosy in 2005. However, the battle against the disease is far from over. A spike in the number of new infections has furthered alarm that the disease may be showing signs of a resurgence in India. 90,709 cases of leprosy were recorded in the 2017-18 period, statistics suggest. This is […]
Interview with health activist Anjali Gopalan May 2016 The lessons learnt in the 1990s from securing access to antiretroviral medicines to treat HIV and AIDS highlight the role of patients in demanding better access to life-saving medicines. As India, like many other growing economies, faces new, deadly diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease, Anjali […]
