-The Telegraph Policymakers need to look at women’s reproductive health comprehensively Light seems to have finally appeared at the end of a long, dark tunnel for India. According to the latest Sample Registration System report, the maternal mortality ratio has declined by eight points between 2014-16 and 2015-17. In real numbers, 2,000 deaths have been averted per year in this period. One of the reasons behind this success is the increased access...

  Adolescence is a period when physical and neuro-maturational changes take place in the body of a young girl. Although it is illegal marrying a girl under the age of 18 years as per the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, adolescent girls in our country are compelled to marry and attain pregnancy that adversely affects well-being and outcomes of both mothers and their children. Latest available data shows that societal norms...

-The Hindu The national framework to improve nutrition for children must be upgraded on priority The health, longevity and well-being of Indians has improved since Independence, and the high levels of economic growth over the past two-and-half-decades have made more funds available to spend on the social sector. Yet, the reality is that a third of the world’s stunted children under five — an estimated 46.6 million who have low height for...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Poor diet and low education levels among women contribute to high levels of stunting among Indian children, nutrition researchers said on Friday after the first-ever district-level study of stunting nationwide. The study by the International Food Policy Research Institute has found that low body mass among women, low levels of education among women, and the diet of the children themselves are, in that order, the strongest factors influencing...

-Scroll.in Thailand spends as much of its GDP on health as India, yet it offers the entire range of healthcare services to all citizens for free. Finance Minister Arun Jailtley’s Budget speech this year and the subsequent media coverage projected insurance coverage as being almost synonymous with universal health coverage. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health insurance is only a small part of ensuring universal health coverage. Besides, to...