-The Telegraph The decade-long flow of funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into India’s HIV control efforts will stop from June 2013, a foundation official said today, intensifying fears among sections of health activists about the future of the programme. Avahan was the first large-scale health initiative in India to be supported by the foundation, said to be t he world’s largest philanthropic organisation, and will be the first to...

* 11 percent of babies born premature in 2010, 1.1 million died * Experts estimate 75 percent could be saved * U.S. rate at 12 pct, fueled by later births, fertility treatments NEW YORK, May 2 (Reuters) - The world's developed countries have seen their average rate of premature births double to 6 percent since 1995, despite efforts to reduce the phenomenon, according to a report released on Wednesday. Worldwide, 15 million of the...

What better elixir than pure water? Thanks to Naandi, a safe drinking water programme, 3,90,536 households in rural areas across four Indian states are benefited.  Naandi, headquartered in Hyderabad, is a not-for-profit organization which works with governing bodies in rural areas, including Karnataka, to provide clean drinking water to the poor. So what really is their modus operandi? It is essentially a community-run programme where the local governing body or gram...

The Rajasthan Youth Association Metro's food bank provides a meal a day to over 200 institutions across Chennai. Prince Frederick meets the people behind the 20-year initiative In its 2010 report, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) states that just seven countries — India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia — account for 65 per cent of the world's hungry.” The World Food Programme...

The government says area under forests has been increasing for the last 13 years. ET finds this is the outcome of statistical jugglery and the use of flawed definitions by India's forest bureaucracy. The bald truth is India's forests are in serious decline, both in numbers and in health. In February, the latest instalment of a little environmental kabuki played out when the Forest Survey of India released its biennial report...