-PTI/ Newsclick.in Air pollution -- both household and ambient -- was responsible for the greatest number of deaths at 6.67 million worldwide. New Delhi: India saw over 23.5 lakh premature deaths due to pollution of all types -- including 16.7 lakh fatalities caused by air pollution -- in 2019, the highest among all countries globally, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.   The majority of air pollution related...

-PTI/ The Week Ensuring irrigation efficiency is of paramount importance for sustainable agriculture. India needs to redesign its irrigation policy, including by promoting improved technological interventions in the wake of depleting ground water, according to an article published in the latest issue of RBI Bulletin. In the backdrop of recurrent episodes of drought and declining groundwater table, ensuring irrigation efficiency is of paramount importance for sustainable agriculture, the article published on Tuesday said. RBI...

-United Nations News Severe malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, is one of the top threats to child survival, yet perhaps one of the least known or understood, according to a report issued on Tuesday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Severe Wasting: An overlooked child survival emergency, details that around one in five deaths among children under age five, can be attributed to severe wasting. Triggered by a lack of nutritious food...

-The Telegraph Union health ministry asserts that Civil Registration System figures should be considered 'authentic' A table on “estimated deaths” is missing from India’s annual birth-and-death report for 2020. The absence has fuelled fresh questions about how the Union health ministry calculated that authorities had registered 99.9 per cent of the country’s deaths in 2020, the Covid-19 outbreak’s first year. A 99.9 per cent registration level would mean the country had recorded almost all...

-TheWire.in * According to the Union health ministry’s new Rural Health Statistics report, for 2020-2021, primary health centres have a surplus of doctors. * This could be true – although there are doubts about whether the report included the number of doctors on transitory, ad hoc appointments as well. * The report fails to capture the qualitative aspects of doctors’ availability at PHCs, including a hidden problem motivated by the absence of sufficient...