Tag Archives: Health

Motherhood has always been deified. As a woman’s ability to bring new life into this world is glorified, her existence is reduced to her maternal and reproductive functions. Despite that, maternal mortality (MM) continues to be a cause of concern. Historically, reproduction has been a strategic site for reform having featured in social and political agendas in varied ways.

The author is a truly amazing doctor, a surgeon, and a writer of fiction. But many doctors write fiction, the most famous of course being Chekov, who I just discovered was not Russian, but Ukrainian, like Tchaikovsky. But unlike Chekov and most clinicians like Oliver Sacks, who mine their case histories for stories, Kavery Nambisan has a deep appreciation of the need for public health.

First, a statement of conflict of interest: the author was my student during his MPhil programme at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, where I taught for more than three decades.  I was not his PhD supervisor, but have been in touch with him, as all teachers do with their bright students…

The pandemic of Covid is here to stay and we have to learn to live with it, as it becomes endemic. Among the many things the Covid pandemic has exposed—the neglect of public health, the disastrous implications of privatization of health, the utter lack of public health.