-PTI Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said nuclear power was an essential component of India's energy mix and he will ensure that the safety and livelihoods of people are not jeopardised in its pursuit. "We will ensure that the safety and livelihoods of people are not jeopardised in our pursuit of nuclear power," Singh said at a function to confer lifetime achievement awards on four nuclear scientists. Noting that the 2011 Fukushima incident...

-The Hindu Centre buoyed by pilot scheme’s success Encouraged by the response to its pilot scheme on home delivery of contraceptives by women health workers, the Centre has decided to extend the programme across the country with immediate effect. The initiative of supplying contraceptives — condoms, oral contraceptive pills (OCP) and emergency contraceptive pills — at home by accredited social health activists (ASHAs) was launched on a pilot basis in 233 districts in...

-The Hindu It has managed to retain stabilisation of its HIV/AIDS epidemic, holding on to prevalence rate of 0.25 % With the UNAIDS report putting India among the nations with a 50 per cent or over drop in HIV incidence rate (new infections), this is clearly good news for the country. Down south, Tamil Nadu, once considered a high-prevalence State, also has good news. The State has managed to retain stabilisation of its...

-The Hindu The U.S. special supplement scheme for women, infants and children to prevent undernutrition is a model that India can learn from India’s economic growth over the last 15 years, and the growing size of the middle class, have become a source of attraction for international investors, especially in the retail food industry. However, the gap between the rich and the poor has only widened: nearly 40 per cent of the...

-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...