Category: Editorials
October 09, 2023
Over the last few months, established data systems in India have been the target of heated dispute, chiefly by members of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, ranging from the inflation numbers [1], to the sampling frame for surveys done by the National Sample Survey Organisation ...
Siddharth Joshi , Veena Shatrugna
October 09, 2023
In January, 2023, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward to 90 seconds before midnight, reflecting the growing risk of nuclear war [1]. In August, 2022, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the world i...
Kamran Abbasi, Parveen Ali, Virginia Barbour, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, Marcel GM Olde Rikkert, Andy Haines, Ira Helfand, Richard Horton, Bob Mash, Arun Mitra, Carlos Monteiro, Elena N Naumova, Eric J Rubin, Tilman Ruff, Peush Sahni, James Tumwine, Paul Yonga, Chris Zielinski
July 02, 2023
Publication and citation metrics have been used for many years now as apparently objective parameters to evaluate educational institutions as well as individual researchers. A recent report in Science, about the Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), near Chennai, Tamil Na...
Sandhya Srinivasan, Sanjay A Pai
July 02, 2023
Custodial death is generally linked in the public mind with police brutality and torture, not with indirect brutality through negligence and callous treatment in jail custody. Yet it is not known how many of the thousands of prisoners who die in our jails every year died due to neglect by the jai...
Meenakshi D’Cruz
July 02, 2023
In low- and middle-income countries, caring for the elderly is a responsibility that is undertaken within households with minimal institutional support from the community or structural support from the state [1,2]. Usually, this responsibility is shared within the home, with the physical and emot...
Mala Ramanathan, Arsha Kochuvilayil
April 30, 2023
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medical science has been widely discussed and debated. Topol foresaw that AI, particularly deep learning, would be used in a variety of applications, with users ranging from specialty doctors to paramedics [1]. He discussed how deep neural networks (DNNs...
Shubhada Nagarkar
April 30, 2023
On March 21, 2023, Rajasthan became the first state in the country to pass an Act implementing the right to health, titled “Rajasthan Right to Health Act, 2022” [1]. This is the realisation of a long standing demand of civil society groups and can be considered a landmark initiative by any state ...
Chhaya Pachauli
January 10, 2023
Maintenance dialysis is life-sustaining but poorly accessible in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). There are not enough functional dialysis centres in the public sector, and in the private sector dialysis is prohibitively expensive. This results in the need for (de facto) rationing of pub...
Priya Pais, Valerie Luyckx
January 10, 2023
Shraddha Walkar’s horrific murder has rekindled the urgent issue of domestic violence and violence against women in India [1]. With women’s bodies often becoming part of a larger ideological and political narrative, Walkar’s brutal murder was given a communal turn due to the interfaith nature of ...
Jinee Lokaneeta
January 10, 2023
The 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a dark picture of the future of life on earth, characterised by ecosystem collapse, species extinction, and climate hazards such as heatwaves and floods [1]. These are all linked to physical and mental health problems,...
Lukoye Atwoli, Gregory E Erhabor, Aiah A Gbakima, Abraham Haileamlak, Jean-Marie Kayembe Ntumba, James Kigera, Laurie Laybourn-Langton, Bob Mash, Fhumulani Mavis Mulaudzi, David Ofori-Adjei, Friday Okonofua, Arash Rashidian, Maha El-Adawy,, Siaka Sidibé,, Abdelmadjid Snouber, James Tumwine, Mohammad Sahar Yassien, Paul Yonga, Lilia Zakhama, Chris Zielinski