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Today, health is a human right in India, and the government is working hard for universalization of health services provision till the grassroots. Health without accountability is a challenging task in hand, and recently, state governments drafted a bill toward public health system to move in the strengthened direction of accountability mechanism. Accountability is the quality or state of being accountable, and it is an important component of the health-care reforms in India. This article provides more nuanced understanding of accountability which includes the specification of accountability, conceptual framework of accountability, and its potential approaches for how accountability is viewed today in India with reference to the Central, State, District, and other stakeholders. It examines the role of accountability in making accountable health plans, and its relationship governance/ownership structures as a key component of health-care reforms as improved accountability is a major element in improving the health system performance. The article elaborates on the definition of accountability in terms of answerability and sanctions and distinguishes the three types of accountability, namely financial, performance, and political/democratic. The article describes three accountability-enhancing strategies, namely reducing the pilferage, assuring acquiescence with procedures and standards, and improved learning from the past experience. The recent events in Indian health care put forward a serious issue on how accountability can be fixed if health mishaps happened and how we can make our health plans accountable to the needs and aspiration for the people of India. Overall, the accountability is discouraging and more needs to be done to enhance the accountability compliance in India.

Forerunning programmes of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which were designed as poverty elimination programmes, took notice of geographical pockets of poverty and incorporated formula-based fund allocation mechanisms to poorer states and regions. The MGNREGA programme, in contrast, used a right-based 'self-selection' approach— relying on the initiative of households' demand-driven strengths—to allocate need-based resources to states and regions within states. This article examines how well the demand-driven, right-based programme with self-selection allocated resources to states and regions according to their respective needs, and to what extent the benefits reached the poverty pockets and catered to the poorest, weakest and neediest households. We find that adequate resources did not reach the poorest states and regions, substantial numbers of poor households remained outside the programme or were deemed underserved, and there was a pronounced programme capture by elite states. The article explores causes and consequences of capacity limitations and low absorption pulls among states, and points to policy implications and ways forward.

MGNREGA is a right-based universal, demand-driven workforce programme with self-selection, providing 100 days of guaranteed employment and productive asset to the poor households (HHs). Its universalism assured unlimited resources to satisfy any demand and hard manual labour ensured that only poor would like to access it by design. The programme earmarked 33 per cent share for women but did not as a right or policy incorporate any definite share or affirmative action for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) like other flagship programmes of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) or Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY). In the light of the above paradigm, this study explores as to how far this programme had accommodated the interests and requirements of the SCs/STs in Karnataka, providing equitable wage work and productive sustainable assets by building their awareness, providing them equitable space in participatory planning and grassroots monitoring, augmenting their capability to demand work and enabling them to self-select, and in case of breach of their rights approaching accountability through social audit or Ombudsman. The study finds low awareness, low grassroots participation in planning and monitoring, and inequitable participation of SCs/STs in both wage employment and assets. The study finds exclusion of SCs/STs from the assets sharper and more pronounced than their exclusion in wage employment. The study finds evidence that a right-based workfare programme with self-selection alone was incapable of being a substitute for earmarking (reservation, affirmative action) and protecting the interests of SC/ST HHs. The study finds that promotional goals included in the guidelines do not by themselves translate into formal actions, monitorable outputs and outcomes. Our primary data also show that the socio-economic and political predicament of SC/ST HHs justified a case for definite affirmative action for them. The study gathers primary and secondary evidences to show that in Karnataka, the programme failed the test of social justice and inclusion proportionate to the disabilities and need of SCs/STs and required immediate attention and policy responses.

With the launch of new Government of India's initiative Ayushman bharat that envisages conversion of all subcenters into health and wellness centers, the role of nursing professionals in primary health care will be undergoing paradigm shift. Nurses are approximately two-third of the population of health workforce in India. Nurses' scope of work has widened with additional roles and responsibilities due to shift in the pattern of burden of diseases. The emergence of zoonotic infectious diseases has further enlarged their responsibilities. The main areas, which need attention, are development of nursing workforce, selection and recruitment, placement as per specialization, and preservice and in-service training related to zoonotic surveillance. This article attempts to discuss the role of nurses under emerging zoonotic disease infections.

Altered oncogene expression in cancer cells causes loss of redox homeostasis resulting in oxidative DNA damage, e.g. 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG), repaired by base excision repair (BER). PARP1 coordinates BER and relies on the upstream 8-oxoguanine-DNA glycosylase (OGG1) to recognise and excise 8-oxoG. Here we hypothesize that OGG1 may represent an attractive target to exploit reactive oxygen species (ROS) elevation in cancer. Although OGG1 depletion is well tolerated in non-transformed cells, we report here that OGG1 depletion obstructs A3 T-cell lymphoblastic acute leukemia growth in vitro and in vivo, validating OGG1 as a potential anti-cancer target. In line with this hypothesis, we show that OGG1 inhibitors (OGG1i) target a wide range of cancer cells, with a favourable therapeutic index compared to non-transformed cells. Mechanistically, OGG1i and shRNA depletion cause S-phase DNA damage, replication stress and proliferation arrest or cell death, representing a novel mechanistic approach to target cancer. This study adds OGG1 to the list of BER factors, e.g. PARP1, as potential targets for cancer treatment. ; S.R.P.'s laboratory is partially funded by funds from the Spanish National Research and Development Plan, Instituto de Salud Carlos III and FEDER [PI17/02303 to S.R.P]; R.T.R. is supported by a fellowship from the AECC scientific foundation; J.M.B. is supported by Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport [FPU15/01978]; J.B.'s laboratory is partially funded by FEDER funds, H2020 BRIDGES project and the Spanish Network on Rare Diseases (CIBERER) [FIS PI16/00440]; Faculty of Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Central Norway Regional Health Authority supports [46056921 to A.S. and H.E.K.]; Svanhild and Arne Must's Fund for Medical Research (to A.S. and H.E.K.); Norwegian Research Council (to T.V.); SIN-TEF SEP project 102020885 (to T.V.); Vinnova (to A.C.K and P.S.); the Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg Foundation (to T.H.) and the Helleday Foundation (to C.B.). Funding for open access charge and project support: European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programunder the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement [722729 to A.P., B.M.F.H., T.H.]; European Research Council [ERC TAROX-695376 to T.H.]; Swedish Research Council (to T.H. and P.S.); Swedish Cancer Society (to T.H. and P.S.); Swedish Children's Cancer Foundation (to T.H.); Swedish Pain Relief Foundation (to T.H.). ; Sí