Until recently it had been an enigma for health practitioners to understand why people do not wash their hands before dinner or after defecation despite knowing the health hazards or benefits associated with it. An experimental study conducted in 14 villages in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh shows that emotional campaigns can work wonders and decisively change behaviours. The study was conducted between May 24, 2011, and September 10, 2012...

-The Hindu The rate of handwashing shot up from just one per cent to 37 per cent in just six months One of effective public health interventions and the most elementary hygiene ritual - washing hands - can help prevent diarrhoea that annually kills 8,00,000 children aged below five years. Yet, surveys show that handwashing remains at best "suboptimal" across the world, whether in India, Ghana, China - or even in parts...

-Down to Earth The country accounts for 29 per cent of the global deaths of newborns on their first day of birth In spite of reducing child mortality, deaths of infants in India on the first day of birth is still way too high and likely to hamper it from achieving the millennium development goal for curbing infant mortality rate (IMR) In 2012, as many as 1.013 million babies died on the...

-The Hindu Just over 7% of women globally and 3% in South Asia have experienced sexual violence at the hands of a non-partner, a new global study finds. Both globally and in South Asia alone, rape by an intimate partner or member of the household is far more common than that by a stranger, the researchers found. In a study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, and released early Wednesday morning,...

-The Hindu Suicide has been part of everyday conversation in many living rooms, but there is little understanding of why it happens Everyone has opinions on why people they have never met, and do not know, kill themselves. I hear people say things like "what a cowardly thing to do," or "he was weak". The words are redolent of casual judgment, perhaps born out of familiarity and even fear: the thoughts that...