In India, with the introduction of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) from 2005 to 2006, utilization of healthcare services at the peripheral level has improved. This study was conducted with the purpose of evaluating knowledge, attitudes and practices of ASHA workers in relation to child health.

In Maharashtra, the Association of Hospitals and its member charitable hospitals are attempting to back out of providing free and subsidised beds to poor patients under the Bombay Public Trust Act Scheme which is a legally mandated service in return for subsidies. They are deliberately confusing this scheme with another health scheme of the Maharashtra government which is a business opportunity at competitive rates.

The Third People's Health Assembly was held in July in Cape Town, South Africa with its theme of "Health for All Now". Developing countries which transformed public health systems under the structural adjustment policies into insurance-based health models have failed in providing healthcare to the poor. Where does India stand in relation to the ruling United Progressive Alliance's commitment to take public health spending to 3% of the GDP by 2012?

The Indian Government is planning to launch a new urban health-care programme in its latest step towards universal health-care coverage in the country. Soumyadeep Bhaumik reports.

Tertiary care plays an important role in determining the structure of the healthcare system and universal access to it. Breaking away from western-oriented tertiary care medical knowledge, a number of issues have to be rethought to defi ne tertiary care in the Indian setting that can be provided by the existing system. Providing tertiary care with district health services will mutually reinforce both and provide healthcare that is affordable and appropriate to local conditions.

This paper provides early and robust evidence on the impact of publicly-financed health insurance schemes on financial risk protection in India’s health sector.

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state and district levels nor offers any solutions on how to deal with them.