A guest editorial I co-wrote with Upendra Bhojani and Werner Soors on the International Health Policies blog on the quagmire of Universal Health Coverage issue and how it is unfolding in India.
Ever since the Indian government’s Planning Commission’s (PC) high-level expert group (HLEG) came out with their 300-odd page report on universal health coverage in October last year, how to reach that much desired universal health coverage has become the central question. Continue reading
Posted in Notes, Public Health
Tagged health policy, india, UHC, Universal health coverage
An unusually punctual gathering on the dais greeted me at Rotary Club. Thankfully, this was a gathering of unimportant people both on and off the dais; none of those species of “Very Important People” often sporting Anna-like caps were invited to the gathering and things started on time. P Sainath was supposed to be speaking on “Rural India after two decades of liberalisation” and the gathering included a fair mix of people across age groups, occupations and stereotypes, yet so unrepresentative of rural India. A lot of those ‘civil society’ types that Sainath loves to decry and dissociate from were there too. Continue reading
Posted in Public Health, Reviews
Tagged Budget, india, policy, Public Health, Public policy, Sainath
Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today-Mahatma Gandhi
A neglected statue and a neglected message
Some things are better assumed and neglected, than acknowledged and attended to. In public health research, these often find a passing mention in “Discussion” section where findings are explained, and worse still, may be as a “contextual” element. Prime among this is corruption. Corruption in health services is nothing new. Perhaps merely a sub-set of the general corruption prevalent in administration of public services, the corruption in health is much more than merely a “contextual” element to be taken into consideration in planning and implementing health programmes. Nor is it merely a feature that may explain some of the poor health outcomes that we often find. Continue reading
Posted in Public Health
Tagged corruption, good governance, health care, india, lancet, policy, Public Health
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An operational manual for planning universal health coverage in Indian states.
New title from IPH, Bangalore on youth and tobacco use