The policy of levying charges on people seeking healthcare, which requires people to pay before receiving care, has been a contentious issue among health policy-makers and people working in the health sector. The impact of user charges on the health of a nation merits serious consideration.

The medical education system in India may be on the verge of collapse. An exploding number of medical colleges; a skewed distribution of these around the country; devaluation of merit in admissions, particularly in private institutions - all contribute to this gloomy picture.

Female health workers in India face an increasing workload that affects their performance. The authors did a study in 2 districts of West Bengal, India, to quantify their workload and identify determinants of good performance.

Serum cotinine levels are a reliable marker of tobacco use. Few studies have validated questionnaires assessing smoking and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) against serum levels. We undertook such a study in industrial workers in India.

Two epidemics of chikungunya fever are reported from Kerala in 2006 and 2007. We aimed to investigate the environmental factors of households affected by chikungunya fever and to estimate the proportion of population that suffered from the disease during the epidemic in 2007.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) in an amendment to its existing code of conduct, the Indian Medical Council (professional conduct, etiquette and ethics) regulations 2002, has proposed sweeping guidelines on the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession in India. (Editorial)

Despite a thriving economy, almost three-quarters of the Indian population lives on less than US$ 2 per day, which is a healthcare economy dominated by the private sector, with out-of-pocket expenditure or distress financing commonplace for the majority, breeds health inequalities.

This study from the Prospective Studies Collaboration (PSC) is a meta-analysis of individual-level information shared by investigators of 57 primary prospective cohort studies to examine the relationship of body-mass index (BMI) with overall and cause-specific mortality.

The authors aimed to analyse treatment outcomes of patients receiving first-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) through the national AIDS control programme of India.

Tobacco use imposes a huge burden of disease in India. Most studies on the use of tobacco among students in India have focused on secondary school students with a few studies investigating younger children and university students. The authors aimed to ascertain tobacco use among pre-university college students in Bangalore.