KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...

The Centre has written to all states to set up desks in each police station in the country to deal exclusively with crime against women and children. Asking the states to sensitise police towards crime against children through well-structured training programmes, the women and child development ministry has said there should be no delay in registering FIRs in cases of crime against children. “All-out efforts should be made to apprehend all the...

Bengal has the largest proportion of teenage mothers in the country, according to a data sheet prepared by the family planning division of the Union health ministry. The grim statistics emerged on a day the Lok Sabha discussed ways to control population and some MPs found merit in Sanjay Gandhi’s iron-fist policy. But Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad hastened to say “once bitten, twice shy” to make clear forcible measures...

A sustainable population stabilisation strategy needs to be embedded in a rights-based and gender-sensitive local community needs-led approach. An authoritarian top-down target approach is not the answer. The evolution of government-led population stabilisation efforts in India goes back to the start of the five year development plans in 1951-52. A national programme was launched, which emphasised ‘family planning' to the extent necessary to reduce birth rates to stabilise the population at...

A new United Nations report says that a radically simplified approach to ensuring access to HIV treatment for everyone who needs it could prevent 10 million deaths by 2025 and 1 million new infections annually. The so-called Treatment 2.0, says the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), could lower the cost of treatment, simplify treatment regimens, ease the burden on health systems, and improve the quality of life for people living...