-The United Nations   Global malaria deaths have dropped by about 38 per cent over the past decade, saving the lives of more than one million people, mostly children, through the efforts of a United Nations-led global partnership that put emphasis on prevention and treatment, particularly the use of insecticide-treated nets, according to a report unveiled today. Some 43 countries, 11 of them in Africa, have seen malaria cases or deaths drop by...

-PTI   One in six Americans are now living below poverty line, the Census Bureau said in a report, reflecting the adverse impact of economic crisis on common man. “The nation’s official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 per cent, up from 14.3 per cent in 2009 — the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate,” Census Bureau said in its report. “There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from...

-The Telegraph   The Arjun Munda government today unveiled a host of health initiatives for the benefit of villagers, especially expecting mothers and schoolchildren, and flagged off a number of specialised mobile clinics, indicating its seriousness about improving medical standards across the length and breath of Jharkhand. Among the schemes launched by the chief minister at a state health department organised function at Haribansh Tana Bhagat Stadium were a school health programme that...

The famine in the Horn of Africa is being seen as an inevitable consequence of drought, "the worst for 60 years". But this famine was almost entirely preventable, and presenting it as a natural disaster doesn't help; nor does our insistence on waiting for a major crisis before responding. Even though lessons about how to prevent famines have been documented time and time again, we don't learn. The conflict in Somalia...

-The Telegraph   Salim Sheikh’s four-year-old daughter and Shailesh Balash’s 11-year-old son are among 23 thalassaemic children who have tested positive for HIV at the Junagadh Civil Hospital where they had been taking regular blood transfusions. Both Sheikh, a labourer, and police constable Balash say their children must have acquired the deadly infection from the hospital, because that is the only place where they received transfusions. The hospital authorities, however, denied they were to...