-Reuters   After Indians migrate from rural to urban areas, the longer they live in a city the worse they score on measures of cardiac health and diabetes risk compared to those who remained in rural areas, according to an Indian study. Body fat, blood pressure and fasting insulin levels -- a measure of diabetes risk - all increased within a decade of moving to a city, and for decades after, blood...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has written to the Manmohan Singh government on the issue of manual scavenging: in a letter dated June 9, it has made out a case once again for a new law to end manual scavenging. The letter points out that in a resolution on October 23, 2010, the NAC had expressed its anguish at the official failure to end manual scavenging in the country...

Certain provisions in the rules notified under the IT Act cause concern about the security of sensitive personal information. ON April 11, the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology notified new rules under the Information Technology Act, 2000, to regulate the use of the Internet. This led to widespread apprehensions that the government and private persons might gain free access to sensitive personal information concerning Internet users. The government, however,...

A World Health Organisation agency evaluates electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones for carcinogenicity. THERE has been a dramatic increase in the use of the mobile phone worldwide since its introduction in the mid-1980s. According to the estimate of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), currently there are about five billion mobile phone subscribers globally. In the past decade or so, there has been growing concern about the possibility of adverse health effects,...

Policies aiming to combat malnutrition are ignoring an entire generation of women whose overall health has a direct bearing on children’s growth, say advocacy groups and researchers Cradling a frail son on her hip and with a plastic bag stuffed with clothes in one hand, Tara Jadam walked into the rehabilitation centre inside the district hospital here to spend the next two weeks. On a hot afternoon, she has walked several miles...