Policy Wise

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!In response to an article Economist, Policy Wise has previously argued that banning quacks is not a viable solution to urban health crisis. Quacks exist because of the poor quality government dispensaries and primary health centers even in large [...]

Gujarat government has launched a new tele-medicine scheme to provide healthcare in villages,
“Through video conferencing, doctors at a distant hospital will be able to diagnose the villagers for basic ailments and prescribe medicines online. The printout of the prescription will be available at the community service centres set up by the department,” said Vyas.
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With broadband [...]

A new report by Save the Children has placed India alongside Ghana in providing healthcare to the children, with more than half of children lacking access to basic healthcare.

More than half of Indian children under the age of five do not get the health care they need, according to a report by Save the Children.
It [...]

Based on the Conditional Cash Transfer model, a new anti-AIDS program in Tanzania will offer people money to practice safe sex,

The $1.8m trial – to be launched this year – will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove [...]

In a fine column in the Indian Express, Saubhik Chakravarti argues that respecting patent regimes does not necessarily sacrifice lives,
They should also see that the question of affordable access to drugs is a matter of public policy, not patents per se. India spends 1 per cent of its GDP on public health — that’s [...]

The Scientist has a wonderful article on the need for proper monitoring and evaluation of public health pro grammes. While billions have been invested in recent years in public health, outcome measurement remains poor. ”The evaluation gap” leads to a situation where there is little accounting of the moneys spent or the benefit of the [...]

Despite the most strenuous efforts,polio has become impossible to eradicate. Now in a more worrying trend, the latest outbreak in U.P is due to the P3 strain,
As a result, no fresh cases of P1 have been reported in the last one year. But the neglect of other polio viruses has led to an unprecedented outbreak [...]

The Economist has an article on the quacks practicing in Delhi,
Ten years ago Delhi’s state government drew up an “Anti-Quackery Bill” of which nothing more was heard. But the real problem is less the quacks themselves than the health-care vacuum in which they flourish. India’s private health business is booming, importing flashy technology to serve [...]

In an op-ed in Economic Times, Arvind Panagariya tells the story of Indian rural health crisis. He then provides some policy prescriptions,
This can be best accomplished by providing the poor cash transfers for out-patient care and insurance for in-patient care. Once this is done, a competitive price must be charged for services provided at [...]

A new study by the World health organization warns that smoking could potentially kill one billion people in the 21st century. An article in The Economist details some of the challenges governments face in attempting to control smoking especially in the developing world,
The practical argument for action is simpler: the tobacco industry is getting the [...]