ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Search

Advanced Search

Public HealthSubscribe to Public Health

Environmental Injustice and Public Health in India: Towards a “Decolonial Intersectional Environmental Justice” Framework

Vol. 58, Issue No. 30, 29 Jul, 2023
This article examines the current inadequacy of environmental policies in protecting the ecology and health of the public, especially among the socially marginalised sections in India and argues for a “decolonial intersectional environmental justice” approach in framing and implementing inclusive environmental policies in India. This article argues that in the acute environmental health crisis, the government should provide research grants not only to environmental and natural scientists but also involve social scientists in research and formulating innovative policies that can lead to a better ecosystem and could provide environmental justice to the people living at the margins.

Failure of the ‘Pharmacy of the South’

Vol. 58, Issue No. 21, 27 May, 2023
Ranjit Kumar Dehury

Some of the issues in pharmaceutical industries, the supply chain of drugs and the access of essential medicines among the Indian population are explored. Further, the roles of the regulator are also discussed in their production and distribution.

Understanding High Mortality among Private Facility Births in Rural Uttar Pradesh

Vol. 58, Issue No. 10, 11 Mar, 2023
Nikhil Srivastav, Lovey Pant, Aditi Priya, Diane Coffey

In the last 15 years, there has been a large increase in facility births and a large decline in home births across India. In Uttar Pradesh, increases in facility birth have led to puzzlingly little decline in neonatal mortality. This paper investigates the role of private facilities in providing care at birth to rural residents of UP. Approximately one in five births of rural UP residents takes place in a private facility. These births experience a stunningly high neonatal mortality rate of 53 deaths per 1,000, compared to 32 among births in public facilities, and 40 among home births. This research seeks to understand why mortality rates are higher in private facilities than public facilities.

Overlooking Public Health Education

Vol. 58, Issue No. 6, 11 Feb, 2023
Swapnil Gadhave

.

Barriers to Establishing a Dedicated Public Health Cadre

Vol. 58, Issue No. 4, 28 Jan, 2023
Sobin George, Mohan Rao

The efforts to develop a public health cadre have not seen much progress in most of the Indian states, despite the recommendations of several committees appointed by the union government, and the 2022 guidelines issued for establishing them. This paper, by drawing on the views of experts in the field, examines the epistemic, structural, systemic, and administrative barriers to the establishment of such a cadre in the south Indian states. It notes that the dominance and perpetuation of biomedical view of health, poor understanding of what public health is, privatisation of healthcare, the vested interests of clinicians, consultancy firms, international funding institutions and the existing hierarchies and binaries within the system, act as major barriers to the establishment of the cadre. The paper suggests that the proposed public health management cadre needs a critical revisit in light of these impediments and concerns.

Time Is Ripe for a One Health Law in India

Vol. 57, Issue No. 53, 31 Dec, 2022
Rashmi Bhat

The One Health framework that espouses an integrated approach for protecting the health of humans, animals and the environment is the need of the hour. The legally binding International Health Regulations (2005) is an existing powerful legislation that can bridge the gap between and among sectors for the realisation of the One Health approach in India.

Historicising the Animal–Human Relationship

Vol. 57, Issue No. 51, 17 Dec, 2022
Nilanjana Paul

Meat, Mercy, and Morality: Animals and Humanitarianism in Colonial Bengal, 1850–1920 by Samiparna Samanta, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021; pp 288, $75.

Public Health for All

Vol. 57, Issue No. 44-45, 29 Oct, 2022
Daksha Parmar

Universalising Healthcare in India: From Care to Coverage edited by Imrana Qadeer, K B Saxena and P M Arathi, Delhi: Aakar Books, 2019; pp 475, `1,495.

COVID-19 Cases and Vaccination Inequality: A Comparative Analysis of Political Regimes

Vol. 57, Issue No. 44-45, 29 Oct, 2022
Different regimes have different capacities to respond to pandemics. Historically, democracies outperformed autocracies in health outcomes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the shortcomings, with a sharper tone, of full democracies (having higher COVID-19 cases than authoritarian regimes) and led to the formation of two competing hypotheses among the cross-national comparative political researchers: (i) biasing autocracy: that authoritarian regime manipulated and underreported COVID-19 cases, and (ii) efficient autocracy: that authoritarian regimes can control the spread of the disease effectively than democracies. We examined these two hypotheses, employing Benford’s test and generalised linear models, using the latest data set from the World Health Organization, EIU, United Nations, and other relevant sources. Findings include having no empirical support for the biasing hypothesis. However, the efficient autocracy hypothesis acquired partial empirical support. We further examined the data on COVID-19 vaccination for reliability (using Benford’s test), and the results indicated a potential case of data manipulation.

Fiscal Marksmanship in Health Expenditure

Vol. 57, Issue No. 43, 22 Oct, 2022
Vishalkumar J Jani

There is a dearth of literature about fi scal marksmanship beyond total revenue expenditures and defi cits at the central or state level. It is of utmost importance to elicit a debate on the budgetary discipline around micro variables. These micro-level deviations result in macro-level errors in budget forecasting. The article explores state-level fi scal marksmanship in the context of medical and public health expenditure over the period—2002 to 2017. The deviations in capital health spending are high compared to those in revenue health spending. This may have an impact on the improvement in health over the long term.

Gandhi and the Development of Public Health Infrastructure in Interwar Bombay

Vol. 57, Issue No. 44-45, 29 Oct, 2022
The fight for independence from the colonial yoke gained momentum in the early 20th century. Anti-colonial sentiment reached its peak in the interwar period as a result of the mass movements initiated by Gandhi, and his ideas of “non-violence,” ‘boycott’ and ‘swadeshi’ had a significant impact on the minds of the native population. This essay examines the impact of Gandhian ideology on the development of public health infrastructure in Bombay city during the interwar period. It highlights the contribution of the medical professionals and students in Bombay, challenging the colonial authorities and constructing a national identity through the lens of public health infrastructure.

Epidemic and Infectious Disease Surveillance

Vol. 57, Issue No. 33, 13 Aug, 2022
Sumitran Basu

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen some Asian countries employ sophisticated mass-surveillance technologies—normally employed to gather intelligence for domestic security purposes—to contain the spread of infection in their populations. There has also been an intrusion of military and allied national security actors into the traditionally civilian domain of public health, in the form of disease surveillance. These emerging developments in the pandemic response provide a pretext for a limited historical review, beginning from World War II to the present, centred on the intersection between infectious disease surveillance and control, national security, and military in the Western world.

Pages

Back to Top

EPW

Term & Policy

Circulation

Advertisement

Connect with us