“Making geography history,” “making distance meaningless,” “a hospital in your pocket,” “cost effective, need based healthcare for everyone, anytime, anywhere,” are all hyperbole—fertile imagination working overtime and hype. But is […]
South Asia
Alice James: Tackling tobacco temptation—why we need to target children
The most effective way we can reduce the global burden of smoking is to target young people. During the debate on standardised packaging of tobacco products, an initiative which has […]
Gopi Gopinath: The future of India’s urban health
The healthcare scenario in India is one of the most serious concerns facing the nation today. Although globally India has earned a reputation for its inexpensive medical tourism (healthcare costs […]
Sandeep Kumar Panigrahi: Infectious disease surveillance in India
On the occasion of its Golden Jubilee, the Indian Academy of Paediatrics launched Project “Uday” (meaning Rising), which aims to develop an early warning system for paediatric diseases in India […]
R Srivatsan: Seemandhra, Telangana, and healthcare prospects in the region
On 9 October 2013, an Indian newspaper reported that over 4000 babies died due to a lack of acute medical care because of an electricity failure in the region now […]
B L Himabindu and N S Prashanth: Can we count on our counting systems?
Basic demographic information forms the basis of policy, planning, and public discourse. The system through which governments record vital events such as births and deaths is the civil registration system. […]
Ravi Murugesan: Open access and academic blogging
I’m not a social scientist, so it was with some anxiety that I travelled halfway across the world to attend the World Social Science Forum. The theme, “social transformations and […]
Veena Rao: Forging a link between agriculture and nutrition in the Karnataka Nutrition Mission, India
In India, where at least 50% of the population is undernourished and anaemic, any comprehensive strategy to address the problem requires every possible intervention, including the most logical, but elusive […]
Jett Aislabie: Airport noise and cardiovascular disease
Last week we published a cluster of papers on airport noise and cardiovascular disease. One US based study found a statistically significant association between exposure to aircraft noise and risk […]
Richard Smith: Moving from global heath 3.0 to global health 4.0
Global health 1.0 was called tropical medicine and was primarily concerned with keeping white men alive in the tropics. Global health 2.0 was called international health and comprised clever people […]