-The Hindu Global Nutrition Report says nation on course to meet only 2 of 8 targets. Chennai: Two reports released on Thursday, one at the global level and the other India-specific, say the country is on track to meet only two (under-five overweight and exclusive breastfeeding rates) of the eight global targets for reducing malnutrition by 2030. The latest data show that 39 per cent of children under five in India are short...

-Economic and Political Weekly The data from the Rapid Survey on Children conducted in 2013-14, released after an inexplicable delay and still in a summary fashion, show some but patchy progress between 2005-06 and 2013-14 in maternal and child health indicators. A preliminary analysis indicates that in those areas where special efforts were made, such as in increasing institutional delivery and expanding immunisation coverage, some results are seen. This calls for...

-The Hindu Business Line A creeping crisis in soyabean in Madhya Pradesh has given rise to this contradiction. Different policies are called for The Indian policymaker seems to suffer from the musk deer syndrome. The musk deer is a rare species that produces musk in its own body. But it does not realise this and searches endlessly for the source of the aroma. India faces a similar dilemma. On the one hand, the...

-The Hindu What happened at Shishubhawan is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India's crumbling public health infrastructure. It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days. Even...

-TheNewsMinute.com If the child-health indicators released recently are to be believed, the status of child health in Kerala has worsened in the past few years. The infant mortality rate (IMR) of children aged below one per 1,000 live births is 12 now but it was 11 in 2001. Similarly, underweight children aged below five were 22.1% in 1992-93 as against 18.5% in 2013-14, The Times of India reports. The rate of Neonatal mortality...