-The Times of India MUMBAI: India's tuberculosis nightmare could be much worse than feared. A new study analysing the sale of anti-TB medicines across India has estimated that there could be two times more drug-sensitive TB patients than currently assumed. While it was assumed that India's annual burden of TB cases stands at roughly 2.2 million a year, the study to be published in The Lancet Infectious diseases journal on Thursday pegs...

-The Indian Express Farm incomes may not revive despite good monsoon. There are new challenges for policymakers. India’s per capita calorie demand has been falling for at least the last 30 years. Most people do a double-take when they hear that. One can’t debate the fact much: National Sample Surveys every five to seven years have documented this. What we can debate are the reasons behind this: In their 2009 paper Angus...

-Frontline Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that the free or regional trade agreements that are being negotiated, which seek to strengthen current patent regimes, are a potential threat to the developing world’s access to life-saving drugs, which it sources mostly from India. WHEN NELSON MANDELA’S GOVERNMENT passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act in 1997 to make medicines more accessible to the poor, 39 big pharmaceutical companies filed law suits in...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Parliament’s Standing Committee on Agriculture may have expressed concern at the unscientific and excessive use of pesticides in agriculture that pose a threat both to the environment and human health. But experts say their judicious use, combined with safe agricultural practices, is the only way out as the country’s growing demand for food cannot be met through organic farming. In its recently presented report in Parliament for 2015-16,...

-The New Indian Express HYDERABAD: A few select government school students in the city will now be served breakfast thanks to Akshya Patra’s efforts. The NGO  will provide breakfast at 20 government schools in Hyderabad from September. “We will give idly-sambar, upma-chutney and pongal-chutney for breakfast,” said Kaunteya Dasa of Akshaya Patra. The breakfast initiative is funded by Aurobindo Pharma, a pharmaceutical company as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility...