Reportage on health, science and politics. And some meditations on film
The Mahars of Bombay Presidency, who buried the human and animal dead, were essential to the colonial state as frontline health workers. They worked in filthy burial grounds where jackals often dug up the dead
A guest post from Sohini Chattopadhyay, PhD candidate, History Department, Columbia University
The invisible indispensable cadre of workers who handle the dead in government hospitals received PPE kits only in the sixth week of the Covid19 lockdown in Bengal. This is probably the case in other cities. The viral videos of dead bodies in hospital wards may point to this At the largest government hospital in Kolkata, mortuary assistants started being given…
There are those whose mental health conditions cannot be managed by deep breathing and physical exercise and whatsapp conversations with doctors. Patients in government hospitals, for instance. The lockdown violates their care In the first week of the lockdown imposed by PM Modi, arguably the harshest in the world, a chance memory of a policeman who had briefly consulted him…
A brief history of witch burnings, abortion laws and insurance rules that have taken midwifery to near extinction
My association with the late Cabinet ministers Arun Jaitely and Sushma Swaraj is ineffably with them as transplant patients: two kidney recipients, and me, a failed liver donor. I come from a transplant family myself: my father got a life-saving liver transplant in June 2018 with my mother as the donor.
Milaap, Ketto and ImpactGuru collectively raised Rs 272 crore for medical emergencies in 2018. This is 11% of the ₹2,400 crore inaugural budget for Ayushman Bharat, the Central scheme rolled out by the government that promises ₹5 lakh free health insurance for the poorest 40% of the population.
Women constitute 74% kidney donors. For liver surgeries, the data I received was much more limited because these transplants happen almost entirely in private hospitals, which do not come under RTI. Here, women are 60.5% of the donors
If cinema is a lens to understand society, then both
Placebo and Munnabhai MBBS tell you two things–why doctors evoke such dislike, and why they themselves appear dehumanized and alienated, out of love with the work they have spent so
many years in training for.
More than one year since the Kolkata flyover collapse that killed 26, the criminal trial has not begun. The police are not speaking on the record. And the government is silent
A reporter goes undercover to see how women are treated in a large government facility in Kolkata By SOHINI CHATTOPADHYAY | 31 May 2015 Munmun Mukherjee is a good patient. She lies quiet on the white stone delivery table of the government hospital in Kolkata but for an occasional low moan. Even this is muted, the edge of her voice flattened, as…