Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

“I am a great believer in the efficacy of the neighbourhood family doctor concept, somewhat in the manner it existed in my parents' time,” says Kanuru Sujatha Rao, a 1974 batch IAS officer of AP cadre and former Secretary, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Having spent 20 of her 36 years of government service in the health sector in different capacities at the state and federal levels, Sujatha Rao has extensive experience and expertise on India’s public health issues. Among the many key positions she has held, Sujatha Rao was chairperson of the Portfolio Committee of the Global…

Subrata Das, a 65-year old resident of Chittaranjan Park, suffered a cardiac arrest. The family called the police, all the emergency services they could think of, but no one turned up. Finally, they managed to get one private ambulance and went from hospital to hospital, but none would admit the motionless patient. “We weren’t sure if he was gone,” his daughter said in a post in which she described the way they were treated at one of the hospitals, “like animals.” It was a neighbourhood doctor who finally pronounced Das dead and issued a death certificate stating that he didn’t…

As coronavirus positive cases near the 6000 mark countrywide, with certain cities and districts reporting high numbers, an immediate end to the nationwide lockdown on April 15 is very unlikely. Instead, states are looking at containment strategies to keep under total lockdown areas which are seeing a big spurt in positive cases, while relaxing some curbs in districts which have reported very few or no positive cases.  The basic guidelines for such a containment strategy were listed in an official “Containment Plan for Large Outbreak” formulated and released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on March 6th…

On February 10th, Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare, issued a suo moto statement in the Lok Sabha on the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus Disease in China and some other countries, and the subsequent actions taken by the Government of India. Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that cause illness in humans and animals. Rarely, animal corona viruses can evolve and infect people, and then spread between people as has been seen with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2014. China reported an outbreak of Novel…

What is the Corona Virus? Corona viruses have attracted attention for causing epidemics in the 21st century. However, their existence goes much further back in time. Human CoV (HCoV) in particular has been infamous for causing epidemics better known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (2003, Guangdong, China) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (2012, Saudi Arabia). The novel Corona Virus (nCoV 2019), hitting current headlines, surfaced on December 31 2019 in Wuhan, China.  Baseline analysis has revealed that nCoV 2019 has some similarities (in amino acid structure) to SARS CoV.  This is a head start to understand the virus but active…