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  • Poverty
  • Trade
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Think Global Health

The India Issue

October 28, 2022

 

Editors' Note

This week, we are featuring a series of pieces about India, a country among the hardest hit by COVID-19. The authors explore India's history of public health and private health-care innovation, its fast-rising rate of noncommunicable disease, and its deep economic inequities.  

Covering all of India's fascinating and important health stories would be impossible, but these nine articles explore emerging issues: health-care access in remote and rural areas, tobacco products, cancer care, food supplementation and malnutrition, vaccination, technology changes in India's health-care landscape, and how climate change is shifting infectious disease patterns in the country.  

We close out this week's series with an interview with global health expert Ramanan Laxminarayan, who shares a bird's-eye view of health right now in India, three years into the pandemic—what the country has lost and learned and where its strengths and resilience lie. 

We hope you learn more about India, and like us, are inspired to continue following—and contributing to—India's journey toward building stronger health-care systems and policies and reducing chronic and infectious illnesses.  

Happy Diwali, and as always, thank you for reading, and be well.—Thomas J. Bollyky and Mary Brophy Marcus, Editors 

 

This Week's Highlights

POVERTY

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"10 Bed ICU" Brings Intensive Care Units to India's Rural Towns and Villages 

by Shefali Malhotra

A collaboration between business experts, nonprofit organizations, and India's government is improving rural communities' access to health care  

Read this story

MIGRATION

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India Needs Cancer Care Outside Its Big Cities

by Elizabeth Soumya

India's poorest often travel hundreds of kilometers to access cancer care 

 

Read this story

GENDER

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HPV Vaccination and the Quest to Solve India's Cervical Cancer Problem  

by Anoushka Arora and Parth Sharma

Misinformation, stigma, and health disparities have stalled human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination         

Read this story

 

Stat of the Week

50 Percent

At the last count, 50 percent of all oncologists in India were in about ten major cities

Read this story

 

Recommended Feature

GENDER

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Women Are Transforming Health in Rural Villages in India 

by Mukteshwari Bosco, Maya Welch, and Gayathri Prashanth

Community health "entrepreneurs" prevent disease, strengthen social safety nets, and improve well-being 

  

Read this story

FOOD

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Giving a Boost to School Lunches in India 

by Santosh Kumar

Supplementing school lunches with iron-fortified salt can help reduce anemia in kids 

 

Read this story

FOOD

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A Clear Fix for a Common Birth Defect in India 

by Siddhesh Zadey and Sweta Dubey

Folic acid fortification in food can help reduce neural tube defects in India

Read this story

 

More of the Latest

ENVIRONMENT

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The Rise of Infectious Diseases Due to Climate Change  

by Vinayak Mishra

Building resilience to climate-linked diseases in India and other countries and communities most at risk  

  

Read this story

GOVERNANCE

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Beating the Bidi Habit in India  

by Mary Brophy Marcus

An interview with Vandana Shah explores tobacco use and policy in India 

Read this story

GOVERNANCE

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Three Years In   

by Mary Brophy Marcus

As India approaches the third anniversary of COVID-19, Ramanan Laxminarayan takes the temperature of the country's health          

Read this story

 

What We're Reading

The 2022 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Health at the Mercy of Fossil Fuels (The Lancet) 

Smoking Linked to Early Vision Loss and Cataracts (WHO News)

Navigating Ebola: Women's Health in a Bloody Epidemic (Public Library of Science's Speaking of Medicine and Health) 

Countering Failures of Imagination: Lessons We Learnt From Paul Farmer (Forbes)  

COVID-19 Is Still a Global Health Emergency, WHO Says (CBS News)

 

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