-The Hindu To bring up proportion of fully immunised children to 100 % THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (Kerala): The Health Department will kick off an intensive immunisation campaign across districts this week to bring up the proportion of fully immunised children to one hundred per cent in the State. The campaign is being launched on Monday in Malappuram, which has been consistently lagging behind in all immunisation and related activities and has the highest proportion of...

-The Hindu     Women are essential for the success of schemes like the mid-day meal programme. Improving their wages and working conditions would be better than blaming them when things go wrong. Mahatma Gandhi once declared, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." By this yardstick, India does not fare well. Consider recent headlines alone: 23 Bihari children die after eating poisoned midday meals at their schools. Six-year-old...

-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...

-The Business Standard Bihar's model of health care through mobile phones is finding many takers Many things may be going wrong in India, but the one thing that has gone right is the reach of the mobile phone. It has bridged the divide between the rural and the urban areas, the rich and the poor. Governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and phone companies are realising the potential of the mobile phone as a tool...

-The Hindu     Aim is to help urban poor go to health facilities after working hours To help urban poor go to health facilities after working hours, urban primary health centres, planned under the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), will function from noon to 8 p.m. Out-patient departments at standard health facilities worked only in the morning; when patients had to go to work, visiting a doctor or hospital would mean losing a...