School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-Newsclick.in Latest health survey (NFHS-5) reveals shocking levels of anaemia and malnutrition in states. In a chilling report, the latest National Family and Health Survey (NFHS)-5 has found that some states have one-third to nearly half of young children (up to 5 years of age) suffering from low weight, stunting and wasting, all symptoms of chronic lack of healthy food. In addition, an unconscionable half to over three-fourth of children, and one-third to...

-Scroll.in Floods, coronavirus, unemployment, hunger. Snapshots from Muzaffarpur district of an election where everyone speaks of change but no one is sure what it means. For six months, there was no work. Only hunger and debt. When work finally came, it proved deadly. “His leg swelled up, sir,” said a neighbour. “Itna hi dukh tha. That was all to his suffering.” Gorkha Manjhi died on October 14, three days after he came back from...

Poisonous snakebites have killed more than a million Indians in the last two decades, finds a recently published article entitled Trends in snakebite mortality in India from 2000 to 2019 in a nationally representative mortality study. Published in the open access journal elifesciences.org, the research-based study has found that the country accounts for nearly half the total number of annual deaths in the world caused by snakebite envenoming. Who are the...

-Scroll.in/ The Third Pole Flash-flood warnings routed through NGOs are giving border villages precious lead-time to escape the wrath of suddenly rising rivers. In the last few weeks of June, a series of WhatsApp messages were sent from Bhutan to India to warn cross-border friends downstream of the Aai, Saralbhanga and Manas rivers about cloud-bursts, swollen rivers and possible flash floods affecting people in the Indian state of Assam. Although originating from officials,...