-Livemint.com The government should put greater emphasis on behaviour change than construction of toilets In 2014, more than half of India’s population still practised open defecation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set his government the goal of making the country open defecation-free in five years, by the 150th anniversary of M.K. Gandhi’s birthday in 2019, by launching the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA). Three years later, we are more than halfway into that period,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The prevalence of low body weight, stunting and wasting is "significantly higher" among children from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, according to a government survey that nutrition experts say underscores challenges that demand solutions beyond just the availability of more food. The survey, carried out this year, has documented 39 per cent stunting (impaired growth with possible long-term impacts) among boys below five years from Dalit households...

-Factchecker.in With a score of 38.6 out of 100, India’s performance on health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Index is the worst among BRICS nations. SDGs are universal targets including ending poverty, hunger and inequality, improving access to health and education among others for all countries by 2030. Created by the international research collaboration Global Burden of Disease, the SDG index calculates the performance of countries on 37 health-related targets of SDGs including under-five...

-TheWire.in Diane Coffey and Dean Spears’ Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste is a path breaking addition to the literature on child malnutrition and development policy in India. The history of global health has been marked with a dramatic turnaround starting from around the mid to late 19th century. This period witnessed an unprecedented decline in death rate and a steady increase in the life expectancy...

-The Hindu There must be consensus among major political parties around vital issues like health Barely a month before the deaths of children in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, allegedly due to the disruption of oxygen supply in the BRD Medical College, the U.P. Health Minister had addressed a consultation in Lucknow organised by the Observer Research Foundation. He admitted that U.P.’s health system was in the “ICU”, and said he was trying...