Without additional funding in the battle against tuberculosis for research, improved prevention, early diagnosis and treatment, some 8 million people will die from what is largely a curable disease between now and 2015, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today. “There is cause for optimism,” he said in a message marking World Tuberculosis Day. “The recent adoption of a fast and powerful new diagnostic tool promises to accelerate international gains against the disease. “At...

India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction. India was recently in the news for the wrong reasons. The serious threat posed by the newly discovered microbe, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo--lactamase-1), resistant to many antibiotics, triggered alarm and panic. Predictions that the country will not meet the millennium development goal for child mortality caused dismay....

A good marker of a country’s progress is the environment in which its children grow up.  Prevalence of malnutrition, hunger, unhygienic surroundings and forced child labour cost a country dearly in terms of its real growth. The State of the World's Children 2011 report shows how little is being invested in the future citizens of our world. The theme of this year’s report is “Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity” and...

The country's most ambitious medical study to count the number of people with diabetes has found 44 lakh people with the condition in Maharashtra. The study's first phase also found another 69 lakh people with pre-diabetes living in the state. Roughly, Maharashtra has as many people with diabetes as Mumbai's population of 1.2 million during the 2001 census. India has been infamously called the world's diabetes capital on the basis of...

Wider access to anti-retroviral therapy reduced AIDS casualties Children account for 3.5 % of all infections Even though the overall HIV infection prevalence rate has shown a 50 per cent decline during the past decade in India, among the States, Manipur continues to top the list with an adult prevalence of 1.40 per cent, followed by Andhra Pradesh (0.90 per cent), Mizoram (0.81 per cent) and Nagaland at (0.78 per cent). It...