-Down to Earth Madhya Pradesh's order to destroy crops cultivated using sewage has triggered a debate over the age old practice of using wastewater for irrigation RESIDENTS OF Kararia, Barkhera, Pathani and Shahpur villages in Madhya Pradesh's capital district Bhopal will soon lose the vegetables they have been growing. The loss will not be due to some DISEase or untimely rain. The plants will be destroyed by the government because sewage water...

-The Hindustan Times The drafting of the National Health Policy (NHP) 2015 is an extremely welcome development. The government's decision to announce Health as a Right is a huge advance. Public health spending as a share of GDP barely rose from 0.9 to 1.1% under the previous government. Governments in rich countries have been spending 5% of GDP on health for decades. Why should we welcome the NHP 2015? Countries with...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Here's why drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) breeds freely in Mumbai: Patients don't get appropriate medication. A new study collating information from eight hospitals and treatment centres across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai found patients were given drugs that they were resistant to. The study, published in PLOS ONE medical journal recently, looked at 340 patients suffering from multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB between 2005 and 2013. "We found only 29.4% of...

-The Hindu Tropical DISEases have often been neglected by pharmaceuticals because the size of the drug market is smaller, people have lower incomes and companies are uncertain about IPR January marked an important breakthrough in the fight against tropical DISEases. Researchers and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Delhi found a drug candidate that prevented TB and malaria pathogens from infecting human blood cells. It is not just that...

-The Tribune In India, mounting demographic pressures are leading to soil degradation. About 17 per cent of the global human and 11 per cent of livestock population is being sustained on a mere 2 per cent of the world's land and 4 per cent of its freshwater resources. The year 2015 has been designated as the International Year of the Soils by the United Nations. Recently, December 5 was commemorated as World...