-The Telegraph   Bengal is the only state in India where maternal mortality rate has increased over a recent three-year period, although it is close to achieving key millennium development goal targets, indicating human and social development, for 2015. The findings of the latest nation-wide sample registration survey (SRS) shows that India’s maternal mortality rate (MMR), the number of women between 15 and 49 years dying from childbirth associated causes per 100,000...

-PTI   India has contributed to a large reduction in global poverty, according to the UN annual report on the Millennium Development Goals , which also pointed out that despite progress, the most vulnerable sections of society were being left out. The report, which was released on Thursday , said that poverty continues to decline in many countries and regions. It said that the fastest and sharpest reductions in poverty were in Eastern...

-The Telegraph   Eighteen babies aged between two days and 11 months died at Bengal’s apex referral hospital for children in 36 hours since Tuesday night, serving Mamata Banerjee a reminder about the gravity of the problems she faces in health care. On an average, five to six children die every day at the 360-bed BC Roy Post-Graduate Institute for Paediatric Sciences, Phoolbagan. The sudden rise in number revived memories of November...

Conditional cash transfers are necessary but not sufficient for improving health. Good government-funded health care is essential, as are schemes which address social determinants of health. The march of capitalism, with its reduced emphasis on public spending, while improving many national economies has also widened the gap between the rich and the poor. For millions of Indians, hunger is routine, malnutrition rife, employment insecure, health care expensive and livelihoods are under...

-The United Nations   The United Nations today declared that the world has completely eradicated a cattle disease that has killed millions of bovines for millennia. It is the first animal disease to be officially declared eradicated – and only the second disease ever, after smallpox. A resolution approved by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at its meeting in Rome today stated that the world was free of rinderpest, or...