-Livemint.com India needs to find better value for money in the health sector According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are three goals a country’s health system must aim for: to improve health, to be responsive to legitimate demands of the population and to ensure no one is at risk of serious financial losses because of ill health. Given this framework, the fourth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) released last week...

-The Hindu The first set of data from the National Family Health Survey-4 for 13 States and two Union Territories should be seen as a report card on how effectively India has used its newly created wealth to alter a dismal record of nutritional deprivation, ill-health and lost potential among its citizens, particularly women and children. Given the steady growth in real per capita GDP since the 1980s, and the progress...

-The Hindu Maternity entitlements are an important policy tool for encouraging better maternal health. This is why we need to do away with conditionality in cash transfer schemes Since the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed in 2013, policy circles have been buzzing with talk of reforms in the public distribution system (PDS). Less well appreciated is the NFSA’s potential to call attention to, and help address, poor maternal nutrition — an aspect...

-The Hindu As of 2005-06, India had 62 million stunted children, accounting for a third of the world’s burden of stunting. Indian states have seen some improvements in child nutrition over the last decade, the first official data in over a decade shows, but over one in three children is still stunted, and over one in five Underweight. As of 2005-6, India had 62 million stunted children, accounting for a third of the...

  A French journalist once wrote: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the same can be said about nutritional status of children in West Bengal at present in comparison to the past. At the time when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, was entertaining private capital in Singur and Nandigram, the rate of undernutrition was quite high in his state. A little less than...