-The United Nations Some 15 million babies worldwide – more than one in ten births – are born too early, according to a new United Nations-backed report, released today, which calls for steps such as ensuring the requisite medicines and equipment and training health staff to promote child survival. “All newborns are vulnerable, but preterm babies are acutely so,” says Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who wrote the foreword to the report, entitled...

Now, Bollywood movies won't have to run a scroll with anti-tobacco messages each time a smoking scene is shown. India has for the time-being shelved a notification that had come into effect on November 14, 2011. The notification had made it mandatory for all new movies that had scenes pertaining to smoking or tobacco use, to provide health warnings at the bottom of the screen all through the duration of the...

It's a shocking revelation in this day and age. Not just Indian men, but even adolescents - in the 15-19 age group - feel that wife beating is justified. Unicef's " Global Report Card on Adolescents 2012", says that 57% of adolescent boys in India think a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife. Over half of the Indian adolescent girls, or around 53% think that a husband is justified...

Bollywood has now been blamed for fuelling India's love for alcohol. Alcohol use in Bollywood movies is directly influencing the drinking habits of India's adolescents, according to a new study presented on Friday at the World Congress of Cardiology in Dubai. Overall 10% of the students (aged between 12-16 years) surveyed in the study had already tried alcohol. But students that had been most exposed to alcohol use in Bollywood movies...

The ICDS' plight is symptomatic of the problems plaguing the Union government's flagship schemes for the poor all over the country.   INDIA may be the only country in the world where we describe the ensuring of the basic socio-economic rights of the people in terms of “flagship schemes” that are seen as the benevolent contribution of governments. One problem with this approach is that the delivery of basic services is...