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Sandhya Srinivasan is an independent journalist, based in Mumbai, with master's degrees in sociology and public health. In her 24 years as a journalist, she has written extensively in academic publications and in the press on current issues in healthcare and medical ethics in India, covering subjects such as the quality of health services, the medical industry, the ethics of outsourced clinical research, and concerns emerging from assisted reproductive technologies and the business of surrogacy. She is Executive Editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and a consulting editor on public health for www.infochangeindia.org. A collection of papers edited by her, Making Babies: Birth Markets and Assisted Reproductive Technologies in India, with Sama-Resource Centre for Women and Health, was published by Zubaan in 2010.

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Other articles by Sandhya Srinivasan :

Healthcare markets and you / Sandhya Srinivasan

The Wild West of stem cell procedures
From street-side stem cell clinics promising the wheelchair-confined that they will walk to corporate cord blood banks that offer to store your baby's umbilical cord blood, an unethical and unregulated industry in stem cell procedures is feeding off the desperation of Indian patients. A comprehensive regulatory structure is urgently needed, writes Sandhya Srinivasan More...

The corrupt doctor
Following the arrest of the president of the Medical Council of India for accepting a bribe to recognise a substandard medical college, Sandhya Srinivasan points out that when money can buy medical seats, college accreditation, and degrees, we're talking about multiple investments that must earn their returns. Those returns are being earned at the expense of consumers and patients More...

Pirates of traditional knowledge
If a draft protocol on access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources is adopted in Japan in October, there will finally be an international law to prevent corporations from commandeering biological resources and traditional knowledge for their own profit, without sharing it with the community that holds the knowledge More...

A vaccine for every ailment
Thirty thousand girl-children from poor and marginalised communities have been involved in an unethical vaccine study against the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer. Why did the Gujarat and Andhra governments sanction this study? And what is the necessity for this vaccine costing Rs 9,000 when even screening tests for cervical cancer are not widespread in India despite costing between Rs 4-250? More...

Why does a drug company sponsor research?
Does a pharmaceutical MNC sponsor research on the risk factors for breast cancer because it is altruistic, or because it markets a drug for this particular problem that costs a patient Rs 90,000 per month? Sandhya Srinivasan starts a new column on the impact of healthcare markets on you, the consumer/patient More...