World Tuberculosis Day to be observed today 2 million people successfully treated annually through DOTS Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the biggest threats to public health in the World Health Organisation (WHO) - South-East Asia Region, causing one death a minute. Although the total number of people affected by the disease has steadily declined in the last decade, there are five million people living with TB in the region — a third...

India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction. India was recently in the news for the wrong reasons. The serious threat posed by the newly discovered microbe, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo--lactamase-1), resistant to many antibiotics, triggered alarm and panic. Predictions that the country will not meet the millennium development goal for child mortality caused dismay....

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...

Scale Up Nutrition coordinates global action to root out under-nutrition. This week in New Delhi, nearly 1,000 international officials, scientists, advocates and development specialists are coming together to discuss how agriculture can be leveraged to improve nutrition and health. Nearly one-sixth of the people in our world are affected by chronic hunger. At any time, around a quarter of all children suffer from under-nutrition. Not only are they more likely to die,...

The Centre appears set to renege on its commitment to the Supreme Court that it would organise elections to a council that regulates traditional medicine whose members have clung to their positions for years, defying rules. At least 40 of the 48 elected members to the Central Council of Indian Medicine (CCIM) have held their positions for more than the scheduled period of five years. Among them, 17 have been members...