Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan has reiterated the Government’s commitment for tuberculosis (TB) elimination by 2025. “In India, under the guidance of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, India has accorded high priority for ending tuberculosis by 2025, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),” Vardhan told his counterparts from […]
National
Rural India: A COVID-19 surge?
Districts in rural India are seeing a surge in cases of COVID-19 cases as the country continues its economic reopening. IndiaSpend reports “on June 1, 2020, 41 percent of Maharashtra’s COVID-19 cases were outside of Mumbai. As the lockdown has opened and testing has increased, COVID-19 cases in the rest of the state have grown. […]
Tuberculosis and the impact of COVID-19
While India continues to pour resources into fighting the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, other health issues are too often sidelined. Many, such as tuberculosis (TB) have plagued India since long before the pandemic. TB, due to rapidly developing drug resistance, threatens to become all but untreatable in the coming decades. This situation can only worsen as […]
Forced evictions: Driving India’s homelessness crisis
It is a travesty that people lose their health insurance during this pandemic. So it follows that it is a travesty that people lose their homes. However, forced evictions accomplish just this. The Housing & Land Rights Network tweeted as much, emphasising in their message that people from marginalised communities are affected disproportionately. “[Forced evictions] […]
High-burden states: Modi to hold meeting
Tomorrow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to review the COVID-19 pandemic with the Chief Ministers and health ministers of several high-burden states and union territories. The COVID-19 pandemic in India has grown precipitously in scope. In the early stages of the outbreak of the disease, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or […]
Brucellosis: A pandemic in the making?
India is suffering under the weight of an ever increasing burden of COVID-19 cases. The country is well on its way to becoming host to the highest number of cases globally as its case count surges to potentially surpass the numbers witnessed in the US in the coming weeks. The last thing India, or any […]
India’s COVID-19 figures fluctuate
The media has been swift to herald the most recent COVID-19 figures as a potential sign of India gaining a foothold in handling the situation. While the newest figures may be encouraging, any conclusions drawn from a single day’s figures may be jumping the gun. The Hindustan Times reports that 75,083 new daily cases were […]
Accelerate testing, Centre tells high-burden states
The Government has instructed multiple states to scale up testing for COVID-19. In the Centre’s crosshairs on testing are Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka and Maharashtra. They are among the states most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with a positivity rate in excess of the national average of 8.4 percent. Of the four states, Maharashtra […]
Fertility industry in Parliament’s crosshairs as Government introduces bill
The Union Government is moving to regulate the fertility industry in India, having introduced the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 in the Lok Sabha on the first day of its monsoon season. Regulating assisted reproductive technology has been an objective of the Union Government for several months. The Union Cabinet approved the Bill earlier […]
Antibody tests: One in four Indians infected?
More than a quarter of Indians may already have contracted COVID-19 – the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or, simply, coronavirus. This is on the basis of an analysis of antibody tests conducted by a leading private laboratory. Dr A. Velumani, the chairman, managing Director and chief executive officer of […]