-Outlook Only six states in the country, including Maharashtra and Kerala, are likely to achieve the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) on reducing child mortality by 2015, a report said today. Except Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal, other parts of the country are unlikely to achieve MDG 4, which aims to reduce Under-Five Mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, unless some key issues are addressed, These observations were...

-The Telegraph A blend of rice bran oil and sesame oil appears to reduce high blood pressure nearly as well as does a common medication, a preliminary study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has suggested. The study has found that people with mild or moderately high blood pressure whose households switched to a blend of rice bran oil and sesame oil for two months showed significant improvements in blood...

-The Times of India HYDERABAD: Is Bt Brinjal safe? The demonisation of BT crops got a push with the parliamentary committee on agriculture in its report submitted last month commenting that transgenics in food crops would be fraught with unknown consequences. But the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) says that Bt Brinjal is safe. A voluminous report on the laboratory experiments carried out...

-The Hindu Press for universal public distribution system Right to Food Campaign—a conglomeration of civil society groups — on Tuesday held a day-long protest at Jantar Mantar here, raising seven questions with MPs on the proposed National Food Security Bill, particularly in relation to people going hungry when the country has surplus food stocks. Rejecting the proposed amendments to the Bill that might reduce beneficiaries and entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS),...

-The Hindu The government has issued a warning letter to Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), asking it to be careful while conducting clinical trials so as to ensure that discrepancies and violations are not repeated in future. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had suspended the Phase-V post licensure clinical trial being conducted by PATH, an international non-governmental organisation, in Khamman (Andhra Pradesh) and Vadodara (Gujarat) for Human Papilloma...