Funding commitments for water and sanitation declined as a share of overall development aid over the past decade despite strong evidence that making the two services available to communities could lower health-care costs, raise school attendance and improve productivity, according to a new United Nations report released today. “Neglecting sanitation and drinking water is a strike against progress,” said Maria Neira, UN World Health Organization’s (WHO) director of public health...

The efforts to reduce child malnutrition in Chhattisgarh have hit a roadblock. The state has partially rolled back its policy of decentralized food provisioning in the Integrated Child Development Services (icds), the key programme for reducing malnutrition amongst pre-school children. The National Family Health Survey (nfhs) shows that 47 per cent of children in Chhattisgarh are underweight, putting it along with Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Meghalaya, among the top...

Study based on better data, more sophisticated statistical methods Among poor countries progress varied considerably The improvements represent “hope at last” For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.The findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, challenge the prevailing view of maternal mortality as an intractable...

If you want to understand why the Maoists grow stronger, watch frail Shyam Charan Kisku, 5, as he keeps hunger away by nibbling at a wild berry called Kendu on a hot April afternoon. Kisku and 40-odd children in this scraggly village of mud-and-thatch homes, 180km south-east of Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, did not get their free lunch this day under the national mid-day meal scheme, the world’s largest cooked-meal programme. Kisku’s mother,...

If recent indicators are anything to go by – the failure to keep food prices down, the proposed national food security Act, the failure to ensure even minimum wages to construction workers at projects for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, to recount a few – it seems the country has given up even the pretence of caring about its children or their crippling, unbudging state of malnutrition. Leaders,...