The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has backed India's efforts to increase measles vaccination in the country through routine immunisation and anti-measles campaigns. In a statement issued here, UNICEF said it strongly supported the government's efforts in increasing measles vaccination campaigns. The statement assumes importance in the wake of four children dying reportedly after they were given measles vaccine during a routine immunisation drive at Mohanlal Ganj area of Lucknow. An enquiry...

Four infants died in Lucknow after they were given anti-measles vaccine The team will ascertain whether the vaccines were spurious or there were procedural lapses It will probe whether Auxiliary Nurse-Midwives were trained to administer the vaccine The Centre has sent a two-member team to Lucknow to probe the deaths of four infants after they were administered anti-measles vaccination at an immunisation camp in the Mohanlal Ganj area. “Most stringent action will be taken...

Every year, India adds the population of Australia to its already staggering ranks of 116.1 crore people. Every 10 years, we add the population of Brazil — the fifth most populous country in the world. As yet another World Population Day comes around on July 11, and India stands poised to eclipse China as the most populous country of the world, the government is gingerly attempting to bring incentive-based family planning...

The government has failed to effectively implement its immunization programmes targeted at reducing child mortality. Of the 113 deaths due to diphtheria — a vaccine-preventable disease — in the country in 2009, 82 occurred in Delhi. According to a report on the national health profile released by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, there has also been a staggering increase in cases of pertussis (whooping cough) from 75 in 2008...

Madvi Madka owns 4ha of land in Chingavaram in the Sukum block in central India. The district in which the block is located has become infamous after 6 April, killing of 76 policemen by the Maoists. This is the ground zero of the war between the Indian state and the Maoists, and Madka, who owns 4ha of land—often left fallow because there wasn’t enough water for irrigation—here used to make...