Health issues in India
The upcoming parliament session is expected to contain a bill allowing for the DNA profiling of unidentified bodies and missing people. However, with consistent complaints of health insurance companies discriminating against those with genetic conditions, would many be reluctant about any kind of DNA profiling system? The intention of the bill thus far only extends […]
Approximately 172 women die every day in India due to cervical cancer. According to the Indian Council for Scientific Research (CSIR), more than 63,000 women in India died of the disease in 2015. This is despite cervical cancer being 80 percent preventable, often treatable and having a high survival rate if caught in its early […]
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a stark warning about the threat of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). India should take note. “NCDs and mental disorders currently pose one of the biggest threats to health and development globally,” a WHO high-level independent commission on NCDs said in their report released on Friday, June 1. It added, […]
Access to healthcare has improved in India since 1990 – but not enough. Meanwhile, inequality persists. The country takes the 145th place out of 195 countries on the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index. This measures the accessibility and quality of healthcare in countries by drawing on a plethora of data, including the 2016 Global […]
The former Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief and Additional Director General of Police in Maharashtra committed suicide on May 11. Himanshu Roy had been fighting cancer since 2000. Some have speculated that post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may have played a rolein his death. This high profile incident has spotlighted lacking mental healthcare within India, […]
Gender discrimination and missing women The price of gender discrimination in India is the lives of almost 240,000 girls under five every year. Much attention is given in India to the issue of female foeticide. Sex-selective abortions are considered the major driver of India’s skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) and its resultant 63 million […]
This article has been republished under a Creative Commons license from The Conversation. The piece was authored by Madhukar Pai, McGill University. It can be accessed here. Full credit goes to the original author and publisher. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Health is a human right. And yet, the sad reality is that, 40 years after the Alma Ata […]
Indian innovation will benefit from a US$125 million loan from the World Bank. This follows an agreement signed by the Indian government and the World Bank’s investment arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The loan will target India’s biopharmaceutical and medical devices sectors through the ‘Innovate in India for Inclusiveness’ project, also […]
On April 19, seventeen-year-old Kadali Shanmukha was found dead. He had hanged himself from a ceiling fan in his hostel room. The previous day, Bheem Singh had also been found dead. He, too, had hanged himself from a ceiling fan in his hostel room. What links the two suicides, aside from the method, is the […]
Just five countries account for 57 percent of the world’s cases of hepatitis B virus (HBV). India is one of them. Almost 292 million people worldwide have HBV. Of these, just five percent receive the treatment they need. Ninety percent are undiagnosed, according to a study published earlier this year in The Lancet. The study […]
