-TheWire.in * A position paper drafted by a group of experts under the National Education Policy 2020 advances a misguided idea of nutrition couched in the language of nationalism. * The paper recommends that meat and eggs be removed from midday meals and from children’s lessons, but on unscientific grounds and through statements devoid of evidence. * The paper also uses conflates wildly different – and potentially dangerous – terms like “gene-diet interactions”,...

-Deccan Herald The country suffered a massive crop diversity loss during the British Raj; later, the green revolution eroded much of the native crops The UN World Food Programme says that 45 million people worldwide are on the brink of starvation. The hunger situation in India is no less alarming. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in its report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2020” stated that...

-Down to Earth The arduous journeys of those who migrate for medical treatment in India Marta kya na karta (One can do anything when pushed to the wall),” says 40-year-old Rita Kumari from Supaul district of north Bihar. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was tightening its grip across the country Rita and her daughter, Sandhya, had to undertake multiple trips to hospitals in Nepal and Uttar Pradesh, before reaching the All...

-ThePrint.in In 2019, 25.79% Indians cleared Foreign Medical Graduate Exam, a test aspirants with degrees from certain countries need to clear for practise in India. Figure was 14.68% in 2020 and 23.83% in 2021. New Delhi: Every year, thousands of Indians with medical degrees from foreign universities appear for the Foreign Medical Graduate Exam (FMGE) — a screening test conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE) and mandated by the National...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...