The second outbreak of corona catastrophe in our country is leading to the most tragic consequences. According to official statistics, 4.5 lakh new cases are diagnosed daily and about 4,000 deaths occur per day. All deaths cannot be graded as inevitable. The disease is not as deadly as it appears. These deaths are caused by the failure of our system[Read More...]
Eminent economist Jean Dreze recently stated in an interview to PTI that India might be heading towards a serious livelihood crisis as the situation seems to be worse this time for the working class amid the COVID crisis and local restrictions by states already add up to something close to a nationwide lockdown. A related aspect is that in terms[Read More...]
Recurrent waves of pandemic has undoubtedly challenged the tenacity of public health system of India, over stretching the meaning of community health workers and bringing them to forefront of discourse. Where 66% of India is still rural, struggling to have one allopathic doctor in a population of 10, 926 people as against the recommendation of WHO to have 1 in[Read More...]
The architect of our constitution felt that it is workable, flexible and strong enough to hold the country together both in peace and war time. If in recent times we have Covid-warriors and Covid war-rooms that mean we are indeed at war. The Preamble indicates the basic structure of the Indian constitution which cannot be changed in any case or[Read More...]
Health expert Srinath Reddy on India’s unpreparedness for the second wave, the danger of variant B.1.617, and waiving patents on life-saving medicines India’s second Covid-19 wave has been particularly vicious. On Monday, 366,161 new infections and 3,754 deaths were reported by the health ministry. We’ve seen hospitals run out of oxygen and beds, morgues and crematoria overflow, and bodies washed[Read More...]
During the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, deaths of teachers got a huge media attention especially at the intersecting period of April-May 2021. The deaths of several hundred school teachers in Uttar Pradesh and the demise of professors at considerable rate in universities especially in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Delhi University (DU) highlighted in both print and are[Read More...]
Allahabad: The recent images of bloating human bodies floating on the Ganga, with crows and dogs picking on the carcasses have shocked the nation and made headlines around the world. Reports of burial of hundreds of dead bodies in riverside sand outside towns in Uttar Pradesh like Unnao and Kanpur have also surfaced. It is clear that most of these[Read More...]
Oxygen ‘audit’ and rationing is taking lives; anesthesiologists say planning adequate buffer stocks is the only way A string of recent directives, from the central government to states, and from states to government and private hospitals are emphasising on oxygen audits and rationing to ‘prevent wastage,’ as a strategy to ease the oxygen crisis in the country in treatment of[Read More...]
Dumka, Jharkhand: ‘I am completely alone’, says Asha worker Jayshree Marandi sadly. ‘He would have helped me in the care and education of the children, but Covid-19 snatched him from me.’ Jayshree Marandi is talking about her husband, whom the pandemic swallowed. Jayshree remembers how he used to take her from village-to-village while he carried out his work. “ I[Read More...]
Health is a precious asset. The World Health Organization identifies health as a state of total physical, mental, and social well-being, rather than simply the absence of disease. It also claims that there can be no true physical health without mental health. A person with good mental health is aware of their abilities, can cope with life’s normal stresses, can[Read More...]
