-The Telegraph Children in government and public-funded schools across India will receive a weekly tablet of iron and folic acid to reduce anaemia under a programme to be launched this week. The initiative will cover about 60 million boys and girls enrolled in Classes VI to XII at government and aided schools, a senior health official said today. It will also cover 70 million out-of-school girls, aged 10 to 19, under the Integrated...

-IANS WASHINGTON: Human-caused outdoor air pollution may be responsible for over two million deaths worldwide - a large number of them in South Asia and East Asia - each year, US researchers have said. A study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, has estimated that around 470,000 people die each year because of human-caused increase in ozone, Xinhua reported. It also estimated that around 2.1 million deaths are caused each year by...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: More than 13,000 women and children from Bengal went untraceable in 2011. Where did they go? Were they abducted? Were they sold for money? Are they still alive? None has an answer. The year before, around 28,000 women and children went missing and 19,000 of them remained untraceable. Missing women and children are ever increasing numbers in government files and reports by various organizations. But for their...

-The Hindu     The much-awaited Drug (Prices Control) Order 2013 has disappointed millions of patients, as it lacks a fair formula to fix the price ceiling and leaves important drug classes out of regulation. The result: High out-of-pocket spending on medicines will continue As far as intentions go, the Drug (Prices Control) Order 2013 is aimed at making critical drugs affordable and available to the public, while preserving a rationale for manufacture by...

-The Hindu The current market prices are essentially over and above the actual cost of production - a difference that could run from 100 per cent to 5,600 per cent, depending upon various therapeutic categories In a liberalised market economy, do we need price controls on drugs? Policymakers and the pharmaceutical industry do not think so. They believe that price controls are an inefficient tool that distorts resource allocation, squeezes revenue, reduces...