Vaccination, often taken for granted as those simple pricks of the needle which caused momentary pain to howling infants, has assumed a more sinister aspect of late. This theme issue of IJME throws light on the bulldozing strategies of big pharma, the distorted priorities of policy makers, and the breach of human rights and ethics to the detriment of the common citizen. The issue of compensation for vaccine- related injuries and the need to make immunisation policy more people – centred are also explored.

Another emotive subject – of whether a state should use pellet guns against its civilian populace; and even whether this should be a subject within the purview of a bioethics journal – has set off a debate appearing on these pages. Nursing error, sectarian organ donation, a student’s response to the ground-breaking film Aligarh, and the negative fallout of otherwise progressive laws are other stimulating subjects covered in the issue. Last, but definitely not least, an editorial analyses the welcome aspects of the new National Health Policy, while advising caution towards potential grey areas.

Cover credit: Cover Collage of IJME down the years compiled by Vijay Sarang

Thank you, Reviewers!

We are immensely grateful to our reviewers for the dedicated work they put into improving submissions. Besides the internal reviewers, we thank the following external reviewers for their support in the year 2016-17: Alastair V Campbell, Alok Sarin, Amit Sengupta, Anagha Tambe, Anant Phadke, Anne Mattam, Anindita Majumdar, Anoop Thekkuveetil, Anuradha Rose, Bishakha Datta, C Priyadarshini, Chinu Srinivasan, Dominique Martin, Faisal Khan, Florencia Luna, George Thomas, Jaya Sagade, Kavita Bhatia, Malu Mohan, Manjulika Vaz, Mario Vaz, Mohan Rao, Molly Jacob, Monica Sakhrani,Muthu Pratibha, Nikhil Govind, Peter Doshi,Peush Sahni, Chinu Srinivasan, GD Ravindran, Jacob Leveridge, Jacqueline Chin Joon Lin, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Joe Varghese, Joy Akoijam, Lopa Mehta, Olinda Timms, PS Rakesh, Priya Satalkar, RS Rajan, Raffaella Ravinetto, Rajib Dasgupta, Rajkumar Lenin, Raman Kutty, Ravindra Ghooi, Ravi Prasad Varma, Samrat Sinha,Sangeeta Rege, Sanjiv Lewin , Sanish Davis, Santosh K Chaturvedi, Santosh Karmarkar, Santhosh Kumar, Shubha Ranganathan, Shyamala Nataraj, Shinjini Mondal, Siddharth David, Silke Schicktanz,SK Godwin, Soumitra Datta, Subrata Mukherjee, Sudarshini Subramaniam, Sumit Kane, Sundar Sarukkai, Sunu Thomas, Tom Jefferson, Udaya Mishra, Uma Santhosh, Valerie Luyckx, Varalakshmi Elango, Varsha Ayyar, Veena Johari, Vidya Satyanarayanan, Vina Vaswani, , William Joe, Yashashri Shetty, Y Madhavi, Zamrooda Khanday, Zile Singh.