Every year, over 875 000 children between 0 and 18 years of age die as a result of unintentional injuries (UIs), with a higher proportion occurring in low-and middleincome countries (LMICs): the WHO 2008 World Report on Child Injury Prevention shows a child UI death rate 3.4 times greater in LMICs than in high income countries (HICs) (41.7 per million vs 12.2 per million, respectively). Deaths due to injuries from drowning, burns and falls are signifi cantly higher among LMICs at 7.8, 4.3 and 2.1 per million, respectively, as compared to HICs with 1.2, 0.4 and 0.4 per million, respectively. The authors present a review of childhood UIs in LMICs undertaken to determine demographic and socioeconomic risk factors. As in industrialised settings, age, gender and social deprivation are signifi cant factors in determining UI-related vulnerability among children. However, certain patterns are unique to LMICs, including road traffi c injuries among child pedestrians, drowning and accidental paraffi n poisoning. These demand contextual understanding and the implementation of appropriate injury control measures, which are currently inadequate.

Background The continuing impetus for universal health coverage has given rise to publicly funded health insurance schemes in lower-middle income countries. However, there is insufficient understanding of how universal health coverage schemes impact gender equality and equity. This paper attempts to understand why utilization of a publicly funded health insurance scheme has been found to be lower among women compared to men in a southern Indian state. It aims to identify the gender barriers across various social institutions that thwart the policy objectives of providing financial protection and improved access to inpatient care for women. Methods A qualitative study on the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme was carried out in urban and rural impoverished localities in Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India. Thirty-three women and 16 men who had a recent history of hospitalization and 14 stakeholders were purposefully interviewed. Transcribed interviews were content analyzed based on Naila Kabeer’s Social Relations Framework using gender as an analytical category. Results While unpacking the navigation pathways of women to utilize publicly funded health insurance to access inpatient care, gender barriers are found operating at the household, community, and programmatic levels. Unpaid care work, financial dependence, mobility constraints, and gender norms emerged as the major gender-specific barriers arising from the household. Exclusions from insurance enrollment activities at the community level were mediated by a variety of social inequities. Market ideologies in insurance and health, combined with poor governance by State, resulted in out-of-pocket health expenditures, acute information asymmetry, selective availability of care, and poor acceptability. These gender barriers were found to be mediated by all four institutions—household, community, market, and State—resulting in lower utilization of the scheme by women. Conclusions Health policies which aim to provide financial protection and improve access to healthcare services need to address gender as a crucial social determinant. A gender-blind health insurance can not only leave many pre-existing gender barriers unaddressed but also accentuate others. This paper stresses that universal health coverage policy and programs need to have an explicit focus on gender and other social determinants to promote access and equity.

There are an estimated 7 million burn injuries in India annually, of which 700,000 require hospital admission and 140,000 are fatal. According to the National Burns Programme, 91,000 of these deaths are women; a figure higher than that for maternal mortality. Women of child bearing age are on average three times more likely than men to die of burn injuries. This paper reviews the existing literature on burn injuries in India and raises pertinent issues about prevalence, causes and gaps in recognising the gendered factors leading to a high number of women dying due to burns. The work of various women's groups and health researchers with burns victims raises several questions about the categorisation of burn deaths as accident, suicide and homicide and the failure of the health system to recognise underlying violence. Despite compelling evidence, the health system has not recognised this as a priority. Considering the substantial cost of burns care, prevention is the key which requires health systems to recognise the linkages between burn injuries and domestic violence. Health systems need to integrate awareness programmes about domestic violence and train health professionals to identify signs and symptoms of violence. This would contribute to early identification of abuse so that survivors are able to access support services at an early stage.

In the absence of a vaccine for combating the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), countries globally are going in for a national lockdown and are mandating all people to stay indoors, and, if out in the public domain, to maintain 2-m distance, wear masks and wash hands with soap to mitigate the spread of the virus and its community transmission. The significance of the much neglected public health measures to deal with communicable diseases has come back to haunt several countries with a large proportion of people who are poor and who live in dense settlements with low levels of public provisioning of basic amenities. This article attempts to examine the feasibility of the recommended physical distancing using data from a national level sample from India. With the aid of data on parameters such as access to water, toilet, electricity, mobile phone and secure employment from the 75th and 76th National Sample Survey Rounds of 2017–2018, a Physical Distancing Readiness Index has been constructed. The performance of 27 states and 2 union territories of India is examined using the Index. This study examines the statistical correlation of a Physical Distancing Readiness Index to the incidence rate and case fatality ratio of COVID-19. Our results show that the poorer households are unequally endowed for observing physical distancing and ensuring the effective implementation of lockdown, which leads to disproportionate increase in the incidence rate and case fatality ratio, keeping other factors constant.

India is a rapidly growing youth market for smartphone technology. Accompanying the spike in Indian youths’ smartphone use is a proliferation of media coverage on the purported impact of smartphones on youths’ physical, psychological, and social well-being. We use a qualitative media analysis to show that the online and print media narratives around this issue reveal widespread fear and anxiety about youths’ smartphone use. We argue that this stems from a moral panic reaction to youths’, particularly young women’s, potential exercise of agency using their smartphones and accessing forbidden content over the internet. This narrative fails to include the potential affordances of internet access for youth and other marginalized people while also failing to address deeper concerns about digitization.