Prime Minister Modi said child malnutrition would be tackled on a “mission mode”, his predecessor called it a national shame. Yet, policymaking is dependent on malnutrition data from 2005-06, with the data from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) carried out by Unicef and the women and child development (WCD) ministry in 2013 yet to be made available. The data was sent to the health ministry for review about six months back by the WCD ministry , but nothing has moved since.

“After being shamed internationally for the abysmal record on malnutrition, it is really surprising that the government is not keen to release data that shows the considerable progress we have made. The improvement does not fit into the crisis narrative being used by commercial food companies to convert malnutrition and hunger into a market for their so-called fortified products,” said Prof HPS Sachdev, senior consultant in paediatrics and clinical epidemiology, Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Policy-on-child-malnutrition-uses-old-data/articleshow/46523739.cms

India has 19 health workers which includes doctors and nurses for every 10,000 people in comparison to World Health Organisation (WHO) norms which prescribe 25 health workers for the same number, the Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.

“As per the Report of the Steering Committee on Health for the 12th Five Year Plan of the Planning Commission, India has 19 health workers (doctors — 6, nurses and midwives — 13) per 10,000 people in India.

“WHO norms provide for 25 per 10,000 people. Additionally, there are 7.9 lakh AYUSH practitioners registered in the country (approximately 6.5 per 10,000),” Health Minister J.P. Nadda said in a written reply.

He said that as per information provided by Medical Council of India (MCI) and Indian Nursing Council (INC), the total number of registered doctors is 9,36,488 as on December 31, 2014.

He said that as on December 31, 2013, the number of auxiliary nurses and midwives are 7,56,937 while registered nurses and midwives are 16,73,338. Data in respect of health professionals in rural and urban areas is not maintained centrally.

He said that the government has not conducted any study or survey to ascertain the number of doctors and other medical and para-medical professionals required in the rural and urban areas of the country.

Medical Council of India (MCI), with the previous approval of the Centre, has amended the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2000, to provide 50 per cent reservation in Post Graduate Diploma Courses for Medical Officers in government service, who have served at least three years in remote and difficult areas.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-has-19-health-workers-for-every-10000-people/article6990391.ece

The stigma surrounding people with severe mental illness in India leads to increased poverty among them, especially women, according to new research led by Jean-Francois Trani, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Trani and fellow researchers, including Jill Kuhlberg, doctoral student and research associate at the Brown School, studied more than 1,000 patients and controls in the mental health department of a hospital in New Delhi from 2011-12, conducting interviews during hospital visits and at homes.

The results, “Mental Illness, Poverty and Stigma in India: A Case–Control Study,” are published in the journal The BMJ Open.

“Mental health professionals must incorporate an understanding of multidimensional poverty stressors as well as address family and community dynamics,” Trani wrote in the paper. “Our findings go beyond medical and public health and link mental health to international development.”

Trani and his team found that public stigma and poverty linked to mental illness were “pervasive and intertwined.” Assumptions by many that mentally ill people are violent and unable to work contribute to their unemployment.

Stigma associated with mental illness limits women from fulfilling family and social roles, increasing discrimination against them, the study found.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-03-stigma-mental-illness-india-linked.html

India’s main public health programs, aimed at millions of rural poor, have been in disarray for months because the government changed the way that over $1.3 billion in federal funds were distributed, according to data and letters seen by Reuters.

In a bid last year to give India’s states more power, the federal health ministry started sending funds for public health programs to state treasuries, instead of direct transfers to its regional arms.

But poorly-run regional bureaucracies were unable to cope and both the flagship National Health Mission (NHM) and India’s AIDS prevention programs suffered – thousands of health workers were not paid for months and the construction of clinics in rural areas was delayed.

In some cases, state governments temporarily used the funds earmarked for health programs to meet needs of other sectors, health officials said.

The funds involved amounted to about one-third of the total federal spending on health, and led to further deterioration in India’s tattered public health system.

Eleven letters obtained by a Reuters reporter under India’s Right to Information Act revealed the health ministry’s desperate, and failed, attempts to push states to release funds to NHM arms.

The decision last year to route many payments through states, launched by the previous Congress party-led government, affected other sectors as well, but the impact on health programs has been glaring.

India spends just 1 percent of its GDP on public health, less than Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. On Saturday, the federal government increased the annual budget for its main health department by just 2 percent to $4.8 billion.

Still, India struggles to spend all of its allocated health funds because of an inadequate number of doctors and hospitals, and bureaucratic bungling. Data shows the government has only once spent all of its health budget since 2005.

Since April, the federal government has sent more than $1.3 billion to the states for the NHM, which undertakes treatment of diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, construction of rural health centers and immunisation drives.

No state treasury released the funds to the designated health societies within a stipulated 15-day period, with delays running into months in some cases, according to government data seen by Reuters. More than $180 million is still to be released.

…

Several NHM officials interviewed by Reuters said the state health units were deprived of funds for months. Salaries, training and building new clinics were hit.

In the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, 9,000 health workers have not received salaries for three months and cash incentives for women who give birth in a government hospital have been withheld, said Yash Pal Sharma, the state’s director for the NHM.

Treasuries in the north-eastern states of Meghalaya and Mizoram held NHM funds for 151 days and 79 days, respectively, data as of Feb. 22 showed. In India’s third-largest state Maharashtra, funds sent in June reached the health society in December.

“Outreach programs have been severely impacted,” said a health ministry official in New Delhi. “The entire system has been paralysed, bureaucracy has become bureau-crazy.”

India’s AIDS prevention drive, a program separate from the NHM, was also affected by the new payments system. Workers from high-risk groups, such as sex workers and injectable drug users, who are employed to run programs within their communities are quitting because of irregular pay.

Rama, a project manager in one such community-based program for sex workers in Mumbai, said 17 of her 23 team members have quit because of delayed salaries. New people hired will take months before they can efficiently run the program.

“It takes a lot of time to build trust within our communities. Our HIV testing numbers have fallen by half because sex workers don’t trust new people,” said the 26-year-old, who says she moonlights as a sex worker herself to survive.

India runs more than 1,800 community-based programs for AIDS prevention. The World Bank has estimated India’s policy of targeting sex workers to control AIDS would avert three million infections during 1995-2015.

Government data showed that India’s National AIDS Control Organisation released $67 million to state governments in recent months as a second installment for the overall program, but only $39 million reached its state-level health societies. The first installment of $78 million was released by state treasuries after months of delays.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/66911772/indias-health-programs-dented