-The Hindu   Growth in number of women needing contraception concentrated in 69 poorest countries Poorest countries within the developing world lag far behind higher-income developing countries in meeting the demand for modern contraception, says a study. Between 2003 and 2012, the total number of women wanting to avoid pregnancy and needing contraception increased from 716 million to 867 million, with the growth concentrated in 69 poorest countries where modern methods use was already...

-The Hindu Over 1,00,000 children, below the age of 11 months, die of diarrhoea annually in India which is the second leading killer of young children globally, after pneumonia. India accounts for the highest number of diarrhoeal deaths, a latest study has suggested. A new international study published in the latest edition of the British medical journal The Lancetprovides the clearest picture yet of the impact and most common causes of diarrhoeal...

-The Times of India A study on the causes of severe diarrhoea in young children, conducted at seven sites in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian countries including India, has found that rotavirus is responsible for most such cases. The Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS), published in the latest issue of Lancet, shows diarrhoeal disease, which is responsible for one in every ten child deaths during the first five years of life worldwide,...

-The Hindu Mumbai: Unsafe abortions are killing a woman every two hours in this country, according to estimates and calculations correlating data on maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and Sample Registration System (SRS) data by Ipas, India, an international NGO working on increasing access to safe abortion services. The last nationwide MMR data giving details of causes of maternal deaths was in SRS 2001-03, said advisor, policy for Ipas India, Medha Gandhi. While...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...