-Economic and Political Weekly The importance of hand-washing in personal and public hygiene has evolved over the centuries. While the market with its countless number of soaps and hand-wash products for personal hygiene with the accompanying advertising has created a false sense of security, it is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against disease. Lekha D Bhat (lekhabhatd@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Social...
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Reality behind Odisha’s dying infants -Vidya Krishnan
-The Hindu What happened at Shishubhawan is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India's crumbling public health infrastructure. It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days. Even...
More »Child-health indicators show worsening condition of children in Kerala
-TheNewsMinute.com If the child-health indicators released recently are to be believed, the status of child health in Kerala has worsened in the past few years. The infant mortality rate (IMR) of children aged below one per 1,000 live births is 12 now but it was 11 in 2001. Similarly, underweight children aged below five were 22.1% in 1992-93 as against 18.5% in 2013-14, The Times of India reports. The rate of Neonatal mortality...
More »Maternal mortality on a decline, but challenges remain -Vani Manocha
-Down to Earth An earlier report had said that India accounts for the maximum number of maternal deaths in the world — 17 per cent or nearly 50,000 of the 289,000 The number of women dying during pregnancy, childbirth or within six weeks after birth has fallen by 44 per cent since 1990, say United Nations agencies, including the World Bank. A recently-released report has said that maternal deaths around the world dropped...
More »Nutrition for kids -Aparajita Dasgupta
-The Indian Express Why early life investment matters, and what we should do about it. With the success in reducing child mortality, the challenge before India is to safeguard early-life conditions in order to prevent long-run loss in welfare for individuals and the economy. Malnutrition rates for India are extremely high, with about 38.4 per cent of children being stunted and 46 per cent underweight (National Family Health Survey, 2005-06). There...
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