Kolkata: July 30, 2010

A Bill was passed in the West Bengal Assembly on Thursday to prevent unethical practices in clinical establishments and ensure a patient's right to treatment.Replying to a debate on the West Bengal Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Bill 2010, the State's Health Minister Surya Kanta Mishra said that private hospitals and nursing homes will, according to the new legislation, have to admit a patient without waiting for the patient's party to pay.

Read more

Patna: July 29, 2010

Bihar is set to win the battle against polio as state recorded a steady decline in cases this year. A World Health Organisation official said that in 2010 so far, Bihar has recorded six polio cases, all type P3, and the state has not reported any of the dangerous P1 cases since October 2009. A Unicef official said it was good news that the state has remained free of the polio P1 for over nine months, the longest period so far. The WHO and UNICEF officials said that for the first time, both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are concurrently free of P1 polio since November 2009, providing an unprecedented opportunity to eliminate the strain from India.

Read more

Chandigarh: July 27, 2010

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda announced that New Born Corners (NBC) and Sick New Born Care Units (SNCUs) will be set up in all government hospitals in the State to check infant mortality rate. Besides, a special campaign would be launched to treat the anaemic children. These and some other decisions to improve the health facilities were taken at the general body meeting of State Health Mission presided over by Mr. Hooda.

Read more

Delhi: July 26, 2010

Haryana’s skewed sex ratio, which has increasingly prompted boys to marry girls from outside the state, has now led to trafficking of women from as far as Sikkim. Police rescued a girl from Sikkim, ‘‘sold’’ for Rs 50,000 in Jhajjar. The arrested woman herself had been sold for Rs 1 lakh to a Haryana boy, and then she allegedly became part of the trafficking ring. Girls are lured away on the promise of finding jobs in Haryana, where they found a growing army of bachelors desperate to get brides due to a skewed sex ratio. The girls are introduced as brides in the villages. Understanding the difficulties in finding brides for boys, villagers don’t object to such alliances, police said.

Read more

New Delhi: July 25, 2010

The Centre is in the process of finalising the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) to provide better healthcare facilities to urban slum dwellers. The ambitious Rs.33,000-crore scheme is expected to bring within its purview domestic helps, vegetable vendors, vulnerable populations such as migrants, rag-pickers and street children. The Mission, aimed to “correct structural imbalances” in the public health system in urban areas, including that of infrastructure and human resource., will cover all cities with a population of more than one lakh.

Read more

Delhi: July 24, 2010

The Union health ministry came close to putting the lives of lakhs of children in danger by considering procurement of 274 lakh doses of BCG vaccine which were well past their expiry date. A note from the vaccine procurement cell of the ministry, a copy of which is with TOI, shows that the ministry was either ignorant of its own previous decisions or dangerously careless while dealing with children’s vaccination. Sixty million children are given BCG vaccine every year across the country to prevent tuberculosis.

Read more

Bangalore: July 24, 2010

Patients across the State are unable to get themselves tested for HIV/AIDS in government hospitals. Reason: unavailability of testing kits. Testing has come to a halt in the past 10 days in all government-run Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTC), including Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Bangalore. A few centres that still have the kits are testing only emergency cases. This when the State testing centres need at least 4,000 kits a month.

Read more

Guwahati: July 20, 2010

Medical advice in Assam will soon be a mobile phone call away with the state government set to open a 24-hours health helpline in the state. The state Health Department on Tuesday signed an agreement with Hyderabad-based Health Management Research Institute (HMRI) for the health helpline which will start functioning from October. People facing any medical and health problem will get counselling and medical advice after dialling 104. Health Department officials said as per the understanding 50 doctors would be ready round-the-clock to reply to the queries related to health related problems.

Read more

Guwahati: July 19, 2010

Assam government is set to launch one of its biggest health initiatives and set up model hospitals in every 126 assembly constituencies to improve overall healthcare system across the state. For this the government has proposed an outlay of Rs 300 crore for the ambitious project expected to be completed by 2013. Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma informed the State Assembly that the 50-bedded model hospitals to be set up in each assembly constituencies would be equipped with latest medical treatment facilities. The model hospitals would involve 2,000 doctors and 2,000 paramedics.

Read more

New Delhi: July 19, 2010

The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry has set up a task force to frame the curriculum for the Bachelor of Rural Health Care course, which is expected to be rolled out in a few months. A new cadre of health care workers for rural India is expected to help in overcoming the huge shortage of human resource in the sector. The government is also seriously contemplating encouraging the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and the Multi Purpose Male Workers (MPW) to get enrolled for this course.

Read more