-The United Nations Only one-third of the world's countries have national strategies for viral hepatitis, the United Nations health agency today said urging Governments to scale up measures to tackle this ‘silent epidemic,' in particular the five types that, over time, cause chronic and debilitating illnesses. "The fact that many hepatitis B and C infections are silent, causing no symptoms until there is severe damage to the liver, points to the urgent...

-IANS Bangalore: A leading journal of medical ethics has charged the World Health Organization (WHO) with promoting the Pentavalent vaccine in countries, including India, though it is known to have caused adverse reactions and deaths in children. In a hard-hitting editorial, the latest issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME), has accused the WHO of promoting the vaccine "by stating falsely that no adverse event following immunisation (AEFI) has ever...

Adding to the debate over celebrity economists blaming India’s malnutrition and stunting vis-à-vis Sub Saharan Africa on genetic differences, Dean Spears, a public health expert and a visiting fellow at Delhi School of Economics, offers evidence connecting our poor sanitation and open defecation with high morbidity and malnutrition. (see both links below). In an evidence-based paper titled Policy Lessons from Implementing India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (2012), based on the review...

-The United Nations   Member States kicked off a three-day meeting at the United Nations in New York today with the aim of finding ways to improve living standards and employment for the more than one billion people worldwide living with disabilities. About 80 per cent of the people with disabilities are of working age and face physical, social, economic and cultural challenge to their access to education, skills development and employment, according...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: What happens when academic rivalry spills over into the political arena? A riveting contest ensues, if the one being played out in the run-up to the general elections along with the Narendra Modi-Nitish Kumar showdown is any indication. While the Jagdish Bhagwati-Arvind Panagariya combo - both professors of economics at Columbia University - are packing a fair punch, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen is ducking and dodging,...