David Levy and colleagues use the SimSmoke model to estimate the effect of Brazil’s recent stronger tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and associated premature mortality, and the effect that additional policies may have.

Restricting access to US death records could have serious consequences for long-term health studies. Government agencies should rethink their decision. (Editorial)

Most states are attempting to copy the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation's model of centralised tendering and purchase of drugs. A study of the Kerala Medical Services Corporation and Odisha's State Drug Management Unit shows that imitating the original model without factoring in the local context and building up the processes does not lead to success. While Kerala has adapted the Tamil Nadu model and even added innovations, Odisha's experiment has had dismal results.

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.

Shifting polio eradication strategies may have generated fear and “resistance” to the eradication program in Aligarh, India during the summer of 2009. Participant observation and formal interviews with 107 people from May to August 2009 indicated that the intensified frequency of vaccination was correlated with patients' doubt in the efficacy of the vaccine. This doubt was exacerbated in a few cases as families were uninformed of the use of monovalent mOPV1, while P3 cases continued to occur.

Shifting polio eradication strategies may have generated fear and “resistance” to the eradication program in Aligarh, India during the summer of 2009. Participant observation and formal interviews with 107 people from May to August 2009 indicated that the intensified frequency of vaccination was correlated with patients' doubt in the efficacy of the vaccine. This doubt was exacerbated in a few cases as families were uninformed of the use of monovalent mOPV1, while P3 cases continued to occur.

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?