-SciDev.net * Most children of housekeeping staff in an Indian hospital found to have low nutrition levels * India’s officially defined poverty-line needs to be revised say nutrition researchers * Nurses tended to have overweight children while the kids of doctors were found to be normal NEW DELHI: A pilot study of nutrition status among children in a hospital community in the Indian capital suggests that the national poverty threshold, as defined by a...

-The Hindu Bengaluru: Although the 2013 District-Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-4) reveals that the maternal mortality rate in Karnataka has dropped from 178 in 2008 to 133 in 2013, Karnataka is still way behind its southern peers on maternal health. For every 1,00,000 childbirths in Karnataka, 133 mothers die, ranking the State fourth in south India and seventh in India. While Kerala tops the list, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have...

-The Hindu What happened at Shishubhawan is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India's crumbling public health infrastructure. It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days. Even...

-Hindustan Times School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture. However, a recent very different textbook skirmish broke out about the public and private sectors in healthcare. The story of this ideological clash is bemusing and instructive, illuminating competing perspectives on the nature of education, healthcare and markets in new India. This clash surfaced...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Every third child born in India is premature, said city's neonatologists while stressing on the need to check this trend by improving the nutrition of young women.  Neonatology Forum (NNF) Mumbai's president Dr Kishore Sanghvi said, "It is estimated that 3.6 million premature births took place in India in 2010. India is the biggest contributor to the world's prematurity burden.'' He was speaking at a function held on...