-The Hindu Business Line Scientists, farmer groups urge FSSAI Hyderabad: Several scientists and non-governmental organisations have asked the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to scrap its plans to make synthetic or chemical fortification of foods mandatory. “A major problem with the chemical fortification of foods, said the letter, is that nutrients don’t work in isolation but need each other for optimal absorption,” they said in a letter to the Food...

-GaonConnection.com The Indian government is considering ‘mandatory’ food fortification in the country. Several health experts have written to FSSAI calling the decision ‘a blanket approach’ to meet the complexity of malnutrition in the country. Details here. At least 170 people and organisations, including medical experts and nutritionists, have today, on August 2, written a letter to Ashok Kumar Mishra, the assistant director of Food Fortification Resource Centre, department that regulates food under...

-Press release by Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA Kisan Swaraj) dated 2 August, 2021 170 individuals and organizations along with the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA Kisan Swaraj) have written to the FSSAI urging it to scrap its plans to make synthetic/ chemical fortification of foods mandatory in India [1]. They cited detrimental and irreversible health and socio-economic impacts such as market shifts in favor of large...

-The Telegraph The Union health minister had posted decision on Facebook during a similar outbreak five years ago Two decisions announced by Union health minister Harsh Vardhan this week to help encephalitis-hit Muzaffarpur are identical to promises he had posted on Facebook during a similar outbreak five years ago. The health ministry said on Monday that Harsh Vardhan had instructed that a 100-bed paediatric intensive care unit be set up at the Sri...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A patients' advocacy organisation today urged the Union health ministry to provide free prophylaxis transfusions to an estimated 12,000 to 13,000 children with haemophilia across the country to reduce their long-term risk of developing joint inflammation and damage. The Haemophilia Federation of India, in a petition submitted to the ministry, said many international haemophilia treatment guidelines recommend prophylaxis in affected children, which can help prevent crippling damage to...