Many endosulfan sufferers in Kerala still not recognised NARAYANA Vokalliga from Belur village in Kasaragod breathed his last on November 20 just as his son was explaining how his father had suffered from exposure to endosulfan for 30 years. The former employee of the Plantation Corporation of Kerala used to spray the toxic pesticide manually in the corporation’s cashew plantations at Nanjamparamba estate. When the corporation switched to aerial spraying, Narayan prepared...

Affidavit before Kerala High CourtThe decision to conduct aerial spraying of Endosulfan over the cashew estates of the Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) was taken on the basis of the recommendations of Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) and other institutions, according to an affidavit filed by the PCK before the Kerala High Court.In the affidavit, PCK Managing Director N.K. Manoj said the allegation that the aerial spraying of the insecticide was...

Even as the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment — dubbed “the Indian Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” — released its first report on the impact of climate change in four regions of the country, it admitted that significant research gaps and lack of extensive databases were hampering Indian climate science. Long-term localised data was not available on vegetation and forest cover, socio-economic trends, farm inputs, pests and crop diseases,...

All epidemiological data in Chhattisgarh are ‘guesstimates' Underestimation of malaria mortality figures Public hospitals ill-equipped to handle severe cases Last week, the medical journal Lancet published the results of a malaria survey undertaken by researchers as part of the Million Deaths Study, an ambitious programme that strives to document the causes of nearly one million deaths in India from the period 1998 to 2014. As per the survey 2,05,000 Indians die of malaria every...

‘This could be one of the major reasons for dengue cases in Capital' No single coordinating authority exists between the Delhi Government and the various civic agencies in the city to ensure that the preventive efforts taken to contain dengue, malaria and other seasonal diseases are put on a common platform and synchronised. “This lack of coordination between the agencies could have been one of the major reasons for the large number...