Highlights:
- UK’s NHS Chief Praises India’s healthcare system! Does the grass appears greener from far?
- Noise can be harmful – balancing Health and Faith: Protest against loudspeakers and DJs during Ganesh Festival gains support.
- Supreme Court Refuses to hear Plea by UHO on HPV vaccine.
By Dr. Amitav Banerjee, Chairperson of the Universal Health Organisation (UHO)
UK’s NHS Chief Praises India’s healthcare system! Does the grass appears greener from far?
As reported in the ET Healthworld, Dr Penny Dash, UK’s Chief of their National Health Service (NHS), has remarked that UK has much to learn from India’s healthcare system and added that India may soon attain the global standards in healthcare delivery that other countries would want to emulate. She goes hyperbole and says, “India, Oh, my goodness…India is just off.”
While UHO is pleased that India is being praised for achievements in healthcare and it application of digital technology, we should not get complacent as still majority of our population do not have access to quality health services and still around half of our population spend out of pocket expenditure for seeking treatment.
The biggest problem with Dash’s statement: she appears to extrapolate from the best part of India to the whole system. India doesn’t have one healthcare system.
It has:
- world-class corporate hospitals
- excellent medical colleges
- extraordinarily sophisticated cardiac, cancer, transplant and IVF centres
- very innovative low-cost hospitals
- enormous pharmaceutical and vaccine capabilities
- sophisticated digital-health companies
Alongside:
- severely under-resourced primary-care facilities
- major rural/tribal access problems
- large inter-state differences
- shortages and maldistribution of health professionals
- informal/unqualified providers
- variable quality of diagnosis and treatment
- substantial out-of-pocket expenditure.
WHO’s own India health-system review describes India as a highly heterogeneous mixed system and notes that approximately 70% of outpatient visits and 58% of inpatient episodes were being provided by private providers. It also identifies quality, affordability and accessibility as continuing challenges.
So to paraphrase, our first PM’s favorite lines from Frost, “…We have miles to go, before we can sleep.”
Noise can be harmful – balancing Health and Faith: Protest against loudspeakers and DJs during Ganesh Festival gains support.
- Noise Pollution Protest: Vidyanand Bapat, a 37-year-old citizen-activist, challenged loudspeakers, DJs, and road-blocking pandals at the Pune Municipal Corporation meeting, demanding quieter and safer festival celebrations.
- Public Support & Activism: His campaign went viral, inspiring citizen marches, social media backing, and debates on citizen activism and free speech, despite facing physical assault.
- Safety & Legal Push: Bapat continues his movement under police protection, advocating for a total ban on open-air loudspeakers, citing past court recommendations and emphasizing public health and traffic safety.
- He has been participating in TV and YouTube debates, pitted against his critics. Extremely articulate and precise in his choice of words, Bapat speaks in chaste Marathi, often quoting Sanskrit verses, holds a steady gaze and doesn’t indulge in personal attacks; all this has won him many admirers.
It was during one interview on the street in the Peth area on September 3 that he was attacked and slapped by a Ganesh Mandal activist who was subsequently arrested. This happened, as was feared by many, given the intense reaction that Bapat was drawing with his campaign. Refusing to be cowed down, Bapat has continued with his campaign and has been provided with a police bodyguard for his safety.
Reacting to the assault, Bapat cited the late anti-superstition activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar who was murdered during a morning walk in Pune, and said, while a person may be killed, his thoughts and ideas don’t die. They, instead, grow exponentially as happened with Dr Dabholkar’s crusades.
The attack on Bapat drew a sharp reaction in Pune with some people condemning it as an attack on the constitutional right to free speech. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis too, condemned the attack.
Without hurting any religious sentiments, UHO would like to make people aware of the short and long term adverse impact on health of the people. In the short term noise can aggravate hypertension, heart ailments and in the long run exposure to loud noise can lead to irreversible hearing loss.
The condemnation of the attack on the activist by the Chief Minister of the State is the right message. Health should not be surrendered to faith. There are enough faith healers as it is in the country exploiting the people.
Supreme Court Refuses to hear Plea by UHO on HPV vaccine.
The Supreme Court refused to entertain a plea challenging the nationwide HPV vaccination campaign for adolescent girls. The bench said compensation rules would apply in cases of incorrect vaccination and allowed the plea to be withdrawn.
A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was hearing a plea filed by the Universal Health Organisation, which challenged the manner in which the government-backed programme was being implemented. When the court declined to entertain the plea, the petitioner’s counsel withdrew it and the matter was dismissed as withdrawn.
While honoring the Court’s decision, the UHO has the following submissions on the way the plea was dismissed.
The exchanges went in the following manner:
Petitioner- Universal Health Organization: The way in which it is being implemented…there is no adverse event mechanism. Whenever there is adverse event, it has to be monitored. Secondly, there should be compensation scheme. It’s being administered to girls of 14-15 years age…there are reports that it impacts their fertility
J Bagchi: WHO prescribes [HPV] vaccine for women. After that, I don’t think doctors should come up with a petition. Wherever there’s a case of incorrect vaccination, ordinary rules of compensation will apply. No special treatment for adverse impact in case of a particular vaccine
CJI: Don’t ask us to make harsh observations. If petitioner members are doctors, it’s a very very serious issue. It’s a question of health of millions of our daughters. And you want to derail this.
We have our reservations on how the petition was dismissed without examining the background of the HPV vaccine trials in India during which there were gross irregularities in obtaining informed consent, incomplete investigations of deaths of seven girls during the trial, and other lapses. The 72nd Joint Parliamentary Committee Report on HPV vaccine trials confirmed all these and came down harshly on the PATH (sponsored by Gates Foundation) and the ICMR. We are reproducing some extracts from the 72nd Joint Parliamentary Committee Report as below:
“The Committee finds the entire matter very intriguing and fishy. The choice of countries and population groups; the monopolistic nature, at that point of time, of the product being pushed; the unlimited market potential and opportunities in the universal immunization progammes of the respective countries are all pointers to a well planned scheme to commercially exploit a situation. Had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the universal immunization programme of the concerned countries, this would have generated windfall profit for the manufacturer(s) by way of automatic sale, year after year, without any promotional or marketing expenses. It is well known that once introduced into the immunization programme it becomes politically impossible to stop any vaccination. To achieve this end effortlessly without going through the arduous and strictly regulated route of clinical trials, PATH resorted to an element of subterfuge by calling the clinical trials as “Observational Studies” or “Demonstration Project” and various such expressions. Thus, the interest, safety and well being of subjects were completely jeopardized by PATH by using self-determined and self- servicing nomenclature which is not only highly deplorable but a serious breach of law of the land.“
The report was tabled in both houses of parliament on 30 August 2013. Since then the UHO is not aware of any controlled trials of safety and efficacy undertaken in the country. The outcome i.e. cervical cancer takes decades to develop and at a very low rate of around 10 deaths per lakh women every year. No trial in the world has lasted that long. The PIL had submitted adequate and well researched literature of these gaps in the evidence of efficacy as well as reports of adverse events, some serious from the HPV vaccine.
The PIL also had submitted RTI responses of deaths from cervical cancer from some states which were very very low. So the contention that we were trying to derail a major public health program which would jeopardize lives of millions of girls is not substantiated as the actual incidence of cervical cancer is very low. On the other hand, for an inadequately tested vaccine launched without safety guards of informed consent, monitoring adverse events and adequate compensation lives of young girls can be jeopardized.
The WHO may have declared the safety of the HPV vaccine. It had also declared the Covishield vaccine to be safe. Our DCGI went a step further and called the covid vaccine 110% safe. But events proved both wrong as the Astrazeneca/Covishield vaccine had to be withdrawn due to serious adverse events like VITT, vaccine induced thrombocytopenic thrombosis.
To quote Albert Einstein, “Unquestioning respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
6 Sept 2026: Public Interest Litigation on safe conduct of HPV Vaccination filed in the Supreme Court by UHO
The weekly newsletters bring the updates on the science, battered and bruised during the pandemic, legal updates and impact of activism for a just society, across the world. These are small steps to promote Transparency, Empowerment and Accountability – the ethos of the UHO.
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Universal Health Organisation (UHO) Weekly Newsletter – 04 September 2026