-World Health Organisation Newsroom India is among the countries most dramatically affected by snakebite and accounts for almost half the total number of annual deaths in the world. Authors of the article entitled ‘Trends in snakebite mortality in India from 2000 to 2019 in a nationally representative mortality study’ analysed 2,833 snakebite deaths from 611,483 verbal autopsies from an earlier study and conducted a systematic literature review from 2000-2019 covering 87,590...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-The Hindu Projects in critical forest habitats are being considered or have been given clearance by the Environment Ministry Few countries are witnessing such severe direct and indirect devastation on account of the COVID-19 pandemic as India. Yet, there is little attention on the roots of our vulnerability. Our challenge is hardly limited to escaping a virus with lockdowns and masks in the short term, and vaccination in the long term. It would...

-Down to Earth Document emphasises on importance of a ‘One-Health’ approach to manage and prevent zoonotic disease outbreaks and pandemics About 60 per cent of known infectious diseases in humans and 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, according to a new report published recently by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Preventing the Next Pandemic:Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain...

-Hindustan Times The World Health Organisation has estimated that between 81,000 and 138,000 people die from snake bites globally each year, and of these, nearly half are in India. Nearly 1.2 million people died from snake bite deaths in India between 2000 and 2019, and many of these fatalities can be avoided by adopting a series of targeted precautions, a new study has pointed out. Published in the open access journal eLife, the...