India’s vast shipyards rake in nearly a billion dollars a year for the country. Here, decommissioned ships are sent from across the globe to be broken down for parts or scrapped. However, is this industry built at the expense of the health and lives of its workers? Alang-Sosiya in Gujarat is the largest of these […]
Features
India not taking advantage of its own vaccines?
India is a leading producer of vaccines. It has enjoyed numerous vaccination campaign successes in the past. Despite this, around 60,000 Indian children under five die of vaccine-preventable diseases every year. India has demonstrated its capacity for successful vaccination campaigns in the past. On March 27, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared India polio-free. […]
Nearly 200 women a day die from cervical cancer
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 Nipah virus: India’s next epidemic?
An outbreak of the Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala has made global headlines and creating an air of tension similar to that of the ebola crisis. Fears of a large-scale epidemic are abundant. However, is there any credibility to these claims? What is the Nipah virus? The Nipah virus is a zoonotic […]
Time for India to deliver on NCDs
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, […]
The inequality of improvement: What the HAQ Index tells India
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 […]
Centre to establish 70 cancer centres, says Modi
The Centre will establish seventy new cancer facilities across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged. The Centre plans to erect twenty state cancer institutes and fifty tertiary cancer care centres, Modi said during a speech at the Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai. There will be fourteen new oncology-focused All India Institutes of Medical […]
Suicide of former Maharashtra ATS chief highlight lack of mental healthcare
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, […]
The high death toll of gender discrimination
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 […]
Aadhaar a must for nutrition schemes in Maharashtra
Those looking to avail a nutrition scheme in Maharashtra will need an Aadhaar card. This follows a notification from the state’s department of Women and Child Development. More than 500,000 women and 6.1 million children under six years old in Maharashtra receive free meals and nutritional supplements through the state’s 97,287 anganwadis. Anganwadis are mother […]