The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant and negative impact on the delivery of eye health services around the world, while pushing new behaviors of both consumers and healthcare service provides. We spoke with Ajay Chawariya, the Executive Director of Project Prakash Charitable Trust (PPCT), to understand how the Project Prakash team is dealing with the challenges of providing eye care during the pandemic.
New Delhi, December 11, 2020: India’s efforts to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) will now be catalyzed by the voices of its citizens and prominent stakeholders from across diverse sectors of India’s health system with the launch of Reimagining India’s Health System: A Lancet Citizens’ Commission. The work of the Commission will begin today, with an aim to publish a final report of its findings and recommendations in the next two years.
Join us next Friday, December 11, for the launch event of the Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System. The Lancet Citizens’ Commission is an ambitious, cross-sectoral endeavor that is working to develop a citizens’ roadmap to achieve universal health coverage throughout India. The Commission will be the first participatory, country-wide report of its scale to be published by the Lancet, a leading international medical journal that has paved the way for medical reforms and global health discussions around the world.
Recently, a discussion moderated by Richard Cash, Senior Lecturer on Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, brought together Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Manoj Mohanan, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Global Health at Duke University, to discuss “A Class Apart: COVID-19 Seroprevalence in India.” Together, they explored the findings and implications of a recent seroprevalence survey (the number of individuals in a population who test positive for a specific disease based on serology specimens) conducted by Professor Mohanan’s team in India.
The education system in India relies heavily on traditional ways of teaching. However, evidence suggests that active, exploratory learning rather than traditional knowledge–sharing has a more constructive impact on academic performance, creating more motivation and ongoing interest in the subject as it puts the student in direct contact with the learning materials. The Soft Robotic Toolkit, part of the Mittal Institute’s Multidisciplinary Approach to Innovative Social Enterprises supported by Tata Trusts, uses active, hands-on pedagogy to provide cutting edge, high-quality STEM learning.
Recently, the Mittal Institute teamed up with the Peabody Essex Museum for a discussion on “Partition’s Legacy: South Asian Art on the Line.” Post-independent South Asia is depicted in many forms, with the intent to make sense of its complexities. After the Partition of the subcontinent along the Radcliffe Line, the socio-political ruptures and conflicts that ensued created numerous questions.
Education has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as a record number of children are not attending schools due to lockdowns and social-distancing protocols in effect across the world. The crisis has also laid bare the many inequities and inadequacies in the existing education systems around the world, and especially in South Asia. We spoke with Nishant Pandey, the CEO of American India Foundation (AIF), and Rumee Singh, the Founder of Katha4Nepal — two distinguished organizations that have accomplished remarkable work in the field of education delivery during the pandemic.
Even though mental disorders contribute significantly to the burden of illness in India — making it a nationwide public health priority — most of those affected do not receive evidence-based intervention. In low- and middle-income countries, such as India, non-specialist workers are key in providing healthcare to rural areas. Growing evidence demonstrates that with appropriate training and supervision, they can effectively deliver brief psychological treatments for mental disorders. However, the efforts to scale up these initiatives are prevented by a heavy reliance on the traditional methods of face-to-face training and supervision.
We spoke with Vikram Patel, the Pershing Square Professor of Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, to learn more about the status of mental health in India and South Asia at large, both before and during the pandemic.
Art is known to transcend barriers and boundaries, binding people across race, religion, and geographies. Dance holds the unique power of bringing relief into a world struggling under the gloom of uncertainty. However, the physical restrictions placed on performers due to the ongoing pandemic have enforced a radical re-imagination of the ways in which dance culture can be practiced and disseminated across the world. Last week, as part of the Harvard Worldwide Week, dance teams representing three global centers and institutes of Harvard University convened to present a program called “Channels of Expression in Times of Change: Music and Dance Across Continents.”
Each year, the Mittal Institute’s Seed for Change (SFC) competition for Harvard students aims to develop a vibrant ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India and Pakistan. Grant prizes are awarded to interdisciplinary student projects that positively impact societal, economic, and environmental issues in India and Pakistan. As a result of COVID-19, we have all had to make adjustments to our daily lives, and Harvard students are continuing to learn in new and creative ways. In light of this, the Mittal Institute recently offered SFC Exploratory Grants to students who are currently working on ideas or a project that addresses intractable problems in India and Pakistan.
By Divya Saraf. This past summer, with COVID-19 restrictions in place, I utilized the research grant awarded to me by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute to investigate the postcolonial effects of the so-called “Company Painting” style, which was developed in the Indian subcontinent over the 18th and 19th centuries under the “patronage” of the British East India Company. The paintings were a result of British attempts to survey, record, and display Indian culture for British citizens, and the paintings have been instrumental in shaping public perceptions of India abroad.