-The Hindu The huge deficit in blood availability outside urban centres must jolt the government into legalising unbanked blood supply Twenty-year-old Putul, living in a village 70 km from a district headquarters town in Chhattisgarh, had been in labour for two days and a night. It was her first pregnancy. In order to hasten labour, the local quack administered several injections that increased her uterine contractions. Forty hours after the onset of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Patients infected with the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) in the northeastern states have been unable to undergo a key test required to start anti-HIV drugs for several weeks because of delays in procurement by government agencies, patient interest groups said today. The Indian Drug Users Forum said several government HIV-treatment centres across Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura are facing a "complete stock-out" of biochemical reagents that measure levels...

-The Times of India A year after trying to provide a dignified life to sex workers, the Supreme Court on Thursday said its orders should not be construed as an encouragement to prostitution. The clarification came from a bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and Gyan Sudha Mishra after additional solicitor general P P Malhotra drew the court's attention to its July 19 order in which it had sought suggestions from the SC-constituted...

-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...

A survey of 71 cities across the country conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has shown that officially 82 per cent of all the water that municipalities of these cities supply comes from surface water resources, and the rest comes from groundwater resources. But of these 71 cities, 11 depend almost completely on groundwater for public water supply. In the remaining, agencies supply water from surface sources by...