I have never been to Brazil's "beautiful horizon", Belo Horizonte, the country's third-largest metropolitan area and an information and bio-technology hub, but I have followed the city's progress against what was once its enduring shame: hunger. In 1993, when 11% of its 2.5 million people lived in absolute poverty and a fifth of Belo's children went hungry, a newly-elected government declared that food was a fundamental right of every citizen,...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

Nearly 70% of infant deaths (within the first year of birth) in the country in 2010 took place during the first 29 days of life (neonatal). While Jammu & Kashmir has the dubious distiction of leading the list with 82.1% infant deaths being neonatal, it is followed by Maharashtra (78%), Himachal Pradesh (77.5%), Punjab (74.2%), West Bengal (74%), Rajasthan (73.4%) and Madhya Pradesh (70.8%). The Registrar General's latest data Sample Registration System...

According to the WHO, TB is the third leading cause of death for women aged 15-44 worldwide.   When did we last consider TB as one of India’s biggest health problems? To refresh memories, here are a few forgotten facts about TB in India: one of the leading causes of death in India, TB kills one person every two minutes and 750 people every day. The direct and indirect annual costs of...

A tank to supply drinking water has been under construction in a tribal village in Adilabad for the last 10 years. It still remains incomplete. The healthcare system and basic infrastructural facilities such as drinking water and sanitation are in pathetic state in rural and tribal areas, leading to high infant and maternal mortality rates, though Rs Rs 1,130 crore had been allocated by the Centre as National Rural Health Mission...