Lack of appropriate services at the healthcare facilities led to three maternal deaths in one block of Deoghar district of Jharkhand while seven others died due to lack of back up Emergency facilities during delivery and mechanisms to deal with postpartum complications. These maternal deaths were reported from Devipur block between march 2010 and February this year.   A Maternal Death Audit conducted by the Network for Enterprise, Enhancement and Development...

Even as you read this, city transport authority officials are gearing up to renew driving licences in a day's time, discoms are now service bound to process your power connection application in not more than five weeks and you are entitled to get a birth/death certificate within seven days. With the Delhi (Right of Citizen to Time Bound Delivery of Services) Act, 2011 becoming a law on Thursday, Delhiites are now...

The famine in the Horn of Africa is being seen as an inevitable consequence of drought, "the worst for 60 years". But this famine was almost entirely preventable, and presenting it as a natural disaster doesn't help; nor does our insistence on waiting for a major crisis before responding. Even though lessons about how to prevent famines have been documented time and time again, we don't learn. The conflict in Somalia...

Moving forward on the contention that reproductive right is also a human right, the civil society organisations in this backward district are contributing in their own little way to improve the reproductive and child health care. The Rogi Kalyan Samiti, as mandated under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), of the District Hospital here has taken up several initiatives to provide better facilities to the patients particularly for pregnant women. ``In...

This is your empowerment, Gehlot tells women Fighting the ignominy of being among the worst States in the country when it comes to mother mortality rate (MMR) and infant mortality rate (IMR), the Rajasthan Government on Monday launched a major initiative to protect newborns and mothers. Thousands of people including a large number of women turned up in this tehsil town to witness the launch, which Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot...