The paper examines the state of public sector hospitals, how they are being compelled to transform into profit churning units through reforms, and in the process alienating poor and the underprivileged groups from public hospital inpatient care.

The paper presents an analysis of the reproductive health care services available to women in rural areas in Karnataka, and the various factors influencing them. Based on survey data on the status of Primary Health Centres (PHCs), and the availability of maternal health services, we analyze the...

This statement following a workshop on ‘Hunger and Health: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue attended by a cross-section of India’s nutritional scientists, health professionals, public health specialists, economists, agriculturists and grass root activists draws attention to the...

What are the critical areas in social science research and intervention which might require systematic attention to ethical issues? A national level consultation on ‘ Ethics in Social Science Research’ drew the active participation of social scientists and explored the means and...

Modern epidemiology has, by and large, been based on a narrow model of biomedicine and behaviour modification. It fails to answer, for instance the following questions: Why certain populations are inflicted with certain kinds of disease, and why the access to its cure and prevention is so...

At the time of reorganization of states on the basis of the linguistic formula, the territory that belonged to erstwhile state of Hyderabad was broken down to three parts and annexed to Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. About one-third of the territory went to Maharashtra, one-sixth to...

Ethical codes of conduct cannot be effectively implemented in isolation and may be enforced in several different ways. One, is to conscientise the members of the profession to observe the rules, second, is to effectively police the system, and a third is to create links with associated...

On April 3, 2006, an independent commission on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), innovation and public health presented its report to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The report was commissioned by the World Health Assembly, the WHO's governing body of 192 member states. The report...

This essay briefl y examines some of the diverse developments of social medicine as an academic discipline and its links to political conceptualizations of the role of medicine in society. The author then analyses the possible future directions open to the discipline in the Anglo-American...

What are the constraints to efficient birth registration? How do people view the compulsory registering of births? This paper reports on a Readiness Assessment study on Universal Birth Registration in Nalgonda district in Andhra Pradesh. The study was aimed at assessing and documenting the...