-Reuters   After Indians migrate from rural to urban areas, the longer they live in a city the worse they score on measures of cardiac health and diabetes risk compared to those who remained in rural areas, according to an Indian study. Body fat, blood pressure and fasting insulin levels -- a measure of diabetes risk - all increased within a decade of moving to a city, and for decades after, blood...

A recent study finds that selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. CENSUS 2011, which brought out several positive features with regard to education, literacy and fertility rates, also confirmed the disturbing trend that had been reported for the first time in the 1991 Census – the increasing gap between the figures for male and female children in the 0-6 age...

-The United Nations   Fast and relatively short-term action to curb soot and smog could improve human health, generate higher crop yields, reduce climate change and slow the melting of the Arctic, according to a United Nations-backed study released today. The study, compiled by an international team of more than 50 researchers and coordinated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “complements urgent action needed to cut...

Policies aiming to combat malnutrition are ignoring an entire generation of women whose overall health has a direct bearing on children’s growth, say advocacy groups and researchers Cradling a frail son on her hip and with a plastic bag stuffed with clothes in one hand, Tara Jadam walked into the rehabilitation centre inside the district hospital here to spend the next two weeks. On a hot afternoon, she has walked several miles...

In the season of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council too is mounting pressure on the Centre to accept its recommendations on various social sector legislations. Over the past one month, the council has handed in its versions of the food security and communal violence bills as well as four notes on land acquisition, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), protection of street vendors and the...