-The Indian Express It requires a far wider spectrum of interventions than mere clinical management. The latest edition of the Global Nutrition Report 2015 by the International Food Policy Research Institute, released on Tuesday, brings back the concerns over malnutrition into sharp focus. In July, the government of India, after much avoidable controversy, released malnutrition (used synonymously as undernutrition) figures from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSoC) data that was collected...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has made public the National Health Policy 2015 Draft for discussion. The draft is more exhaustive and better organised in its coverage compared to the National Health Policy of 2002. It touches upon contemporary issues of concern, including the rapid emergence of chronic non-communicable diseases. From the latest available evidence, issues crucial to tackling chronic illness in India are discussed. Subrata...

-Economic and Political Weekly The draft National Health Policy 2015 is an improvement over its predecessors--the policies of 1984 and 2002. However, it also reveals several gaps, inconsistencies and blind spots which tend to dilute otherwise constructive proposals. The purpose of this article is to open up the draft to further public debate and comment. Forum for Medical Ethics Society (fmesmumbai@gmail.com) is a voluntary, non-profit organisation registered in Mumbai. The society was...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An advertising industry watchdog, alerted by a doctor, has described as "misleading" and "unsubstantiated" a water purifier advertisement that claims the product is the first choice of a doctor and yields the purest water. The advertisement by Kent RO Systems, which features Hema Malini, describes one of its purifiers as "Doctor's 1st choice RO Purifier" and carries the line " sabse shudh paani" (the purest water). A senior official...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's food safety regulator has slashed the maximum allowed limit of transfats in cooking oil and fat by half to five per cent in a move that experts are calling an important step to safeguard public health. But nutrition scientists have cautioned that the government will also need to tweak oilseed crop policies to draw the food processing industry and consumers away from unhealthy but inexpensive transfats to...