-The Times of India AURANGABAD/ PUNE: An 11-month-old boy from Maharashtra's Beed district has been found infected with the vaccine derived polio virus (VDPV). This is the first such case in the state and the third in the country since March 2012. Health officials said the boy's stool sample tested positive for VDPV on June 1. "The child has been ill for prolonged periods, indicating the possibility of immunodeficiency," an official said. The...

-The Times of India In the decade or so that i was at the Planning Commission, i always had advisory responsibility for the food ministry/public distribution system, among other issues of development policy. It did not take very long to find out that the fundamental problem with the system was about so-called "leakages" abetted by corruption: One soon learnt that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was one of the most...

-The Hindu     There is little demonstrated evidence of health benefits from access to ‘improved' stoves and clean fuels Around three billion of the world's poorest people have to burn firewood, animal dung, crop waste and coal to cook food and heat homes, using traditional stoves and open fires. The health-damaging smoke that results is estimated to cause some four million premature deaths each year, principally of women and children. Although many governments, multinational...

-The Telegraph The medical fraternity is worried over the seizure of sub-standard and fake drugs, at times lethal for patients. Police on Wednesday seized 30 boxes of suspected spurious drugs from a cart in the Gandhi Maidan area. Station House Officer of Gandhi Maidan police station Rajbindu Prasad said nobody could produce transaction bills for the consignment. The drugs seized were ofloxacin (for respiratory tract infections), oflozen (for typhoid), ossopan (calcium tablets prescribed...

-The United Nations The head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today called for greater efforts to combat malnutrition and hunger worldwide as the agency launched its flagship annual report, which this year focuses on improved food systems for better nutrition. In a message marking the launch of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA), Director-General José Graziano da Silva said that although the world has registered some progress...