-BBC   There has been a fall of nearly 40% in the number of deaths from malaria worldwide in the past decade, the World Health Organization says. A new report said that one-third of the 108 countries where malaria was endemic were on course to eradicate the disease within 10 years. Experts said if targets continued to be met, a further three million lives could be saved by 2015. Malaria has been eradicated from three...

-The Times of India   The public health department has sought chief minister Prithviraj Chavan's intervention to introduce stringent clauses against medicos who complete their education from state-run or civic hospitals but refuse to serve the mandatory one-year rural stint.  According to an official, the government was considering not issuing medical registration certificates--which is mandatory for higher studies, pursuing job in any hospital or even for starting a dispensary of their own-to students...

The popular outrage over the official definition of poverty at abysmally low levels of daily income, of Rs 26 in rural areas and Rs 32 in urban areas, assumes the state will deny basic services to a household whose income is above the figure. This is totally erroneous. There is no mechanism in the hands of the government to ascertain income or expenditure to identify the 'poor' on the ground. The...

As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

India’s poor can take heart — for there’s justice even in this world, despite and in spite of the Planning Commission. Planning Commission deputy chairman, and expert on poverty, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has gotten off his high horse. Ahluwalia said on Monday that a new committee would be set up to come up with a fresh method to identify India’s poor. Last week the Commission had filed an affidavit in the...