Communicable diseases and the lives they have claimed are going to be on top of the agenda when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Health Minister Anbumani Ramdoss meet for a review of the health ministry on Friday.
The Prime Minister has not hidden his concern about the functioning of a crucial ministry, which has been beset with problems since the United Progressive Alliance government took over.
Apart from endemic problems stemming from issues of medical education and the clash between the health and the information and broadcasting ministries over the way the ban on smoking should be handled, public health crises have been numerous and have elicited complaints all round.
Japanese encephalitis has already claimed over 700 lives in Uttar Pradesh. Sources say the figure is more than double this number. For every one death caused by Japanese encephalitis, there are three cases of maiming and brain damage.
UP Congress chief Salman Khurshid wrote to Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, seeking his ministry's urgent intervention as the state government was unable to cope with the proportions of the disease.
Meanwhile, four people have died in Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's constituency, Rae Bareilly. Congress leaders are furious that despite their appeals Ramadoss has been unable to tour the state at their request, and preferred the company of Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh, who did manage to take him to Gorakhpur, the district worst affected by brain fever.
The outbreak of leptospirosis, another communicable disease, in Delhi where it had not been spotted earlier is also a matter of concern.
Ramadoss has denied leptospirosis, a water-borne disease, has become an epidemic in Maharashtra after the floods in the state, which claimed nearly 300 lives.
No epidemic alert in Mumbai: Ramadoss
However, that it is spreading, is a central worry.
Similarly, in eastern India, especially West Bengal where elections are due in the next few months, dengue is raging. There has been little or no intervention by the centre in the dengue epidemic.
The prime minister was forthright in criticising India's public health record. He said a couple of days ago that infant mortality levels in India were unconscionably high.
