Free healthcare at state-of-the-art hospitals will soon be within reach of even those with meagre resources. The Jharkhand chapter of National Rural Health Mission is mulling a massive tie up with public sector units to provide free medical care to over 25 lakh people of the state who are living below the poverty line. State mission director Aradhana Patnaik, confirming the development, informed that major PSUs operating out of Jharkhand, including CCL,...

Climbing food prices across Asia, especially India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Laos, might slow down by at least five years the region’s efforts to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), a UN ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) report has cautioned. The report says India is among the mostaffected countries. According to the report, the rising food prices prevented more than 19...

Anti-microbial resistance, theme of this year's World Health Day Drug resistance renders medicines ineffective Celebrating World Health Day 2011, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for intensification of the global commitment to safeguard antibiotics for future generations. With growing resistance by microbes to antibiotics threatening the continued effectiveness of many medicines, WHO has made anti-microbial resistance the theme of this year's World Health Day. It has urged governments and stakeholders to implement policies...

The battle against poverty and inequity can be won only if governments focus on the welfare of adolescents, says a UNICEF report. FINALLY, it has been recognised that adolescents constitute a very critical category in the overall battle against poverty and inequity. It is for this reason that the United Nations Children's Fund's (UNICEF) flagship report, “The State of the World's Children 2011”, focusses exclusively on adolescents and cautions against neglecting...

Distribution of basic food grains and fuel at controlled prices every month through the Public Distribution System (PDS) could be the largest service provided by the Indian State, touching as it does over 65 million families through a network of nearly half a million retail shops. Given that the urban middle class has little stake in the health of the PDS, there have to be some compelling reasons for the...