Governments in India — Centre and states — spend around one per cent of the country's GDP on health. Only five countries — Burundi, Myanmar, Pakistan , Sudan and Cambodia — have a lower figure than this. But private spending on the crucial sector is 4.2 per cent of GDP, among the top 20 countries in the world. Within this private spend, employers pay for about 9 per cent and...

Amidst predictions by FAO of a record world cereal production of 2279.5 million tonnes during 2010-2011, the bad news is that drought conditions may bring down Russia's domestic wheat production to 50 million tonnes in the current year from 63.7 million tonnes in 2008-09. Russia has already imposed a temporary ban on wheat exports. This has pushed up international prices of wheat contradicting the prediction of FAO's Food Outlook 2010...

The United Nations warned Wednesday that a food shortage could threaten the lives of thousands of people trapped in floodwater in northwestern Pakistan as six U.S. army helicopters joined the relief effort. A U.S. embassy spokesman said four CH-47 Chinook and two UH-60 Blackhawk utility helicopters arrived in Pakistan Wednesday as part of the U.S. government's continued assistance to Pakistan for humanitarian-relief operations. Bad weather and fresh rain hampered helicopter flights, which...

Wheat prices have staged the most drastic rise in more than 50 years, as a drought in Russia fuels growing worries that it could lead to a global shortage of the grain. Harsh heat and a lack of rain in Russia have killed half of the crop in some hard-hit areas. The slump in production in one of the world's most fertile breadbaskets has pushed prices up 62% since early June,...

CELIA ORBOC, a cake-seller in the Philippines, spent her little stipend on a wooden shack, giving her five children a roof over their heads for the first time. In Kyrgyzstan Sharmant Oktomanova spent hers buying flour to feed six children. In Haiti President René Préval praises a dairy co-operative that gives mothers milk and yogurt when their children go to school. These are examples of the world’s favourite new anti-poverty device,...