-The Telegraph Guwahati: A survey on women drug users in the Northeast has found that a majority of them were unaware of the perils of sharing needles to inject drugs. The study was commissioned by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) under its regional initiative. Termed Prevention of Transmission of HIV Amongst Drug Users in SAARC Countries, the initiative was in response to the gap of knowledge regarding women...

-The Hindu Much of the National Health Policy document reads like a report of health issues and systemic challenges, and is sorely wanting on policy detail Health impoverishment - falling into poverty due to health care costs - affects 63 million individuals in India every year. This is a damning statistic, especially when read with the fact that 18 per cent of all households face catastrophic health expenditures (health expenditure greater than...

-The Indian Express Recently, the Central government invited comments on its Draft National Health Policy (DNHP). The DNHP provides an exhaustive coverage of health issues and challenges facing this much neglected sector. Its major recommendations are making health a justiciable right and denial of care an offence; provisioning of health services through a strengthened public health delivery system in partnership with the private sector; enhancing public spending from the current level...

-The Hindu Business Line   There's no Malthusian problem right now, but without sustainable farming the world will be in serious trouble Food security, a seemingly innocuous phrase, is fast becoming one of the most widely discussed topics of our time. A lot of us would associate ‘food security' as a challenge for the impoverished but it could potentially become a much more widespread problem straddling across geographic and economic divides. The issue of...

-Bloomberg Shobha Singh Bais waited for her husband Govind to finish his dinner of vegetables and flatbread on Jan. 15 before eating her own, as is the custom in their village of Hivar and many others in India. When Govind was done, the 55-year-old cotton farmer calmly told his wife that he had eaten rat poison. Shobha ran outside, calling for her 30-year-old son, Chandan, who has a Tobacco stall nearby. When...