Medical facilities have collapsed as encephalitis epidemic continues to rage Even as the rest of India recovers from Deepavali celebrations, residents of Poorvanchal have been marking a grim time that descends on the eastern Uttar Pradesh region each year: a time local people call the season of death. Ever since July, 470 people, mostly children, have died of viral encephalitis and its biological cousin, Japanese encephalitis — the first caused by a...

-The Hindu   When the World Health Organisation published its revised guidelines for malaria treatment in March 2010, just four years after it came out with its maiden version, an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) was quick to highlight its significance. It was a “testament of how quickly malaria control” had developed and a “marked reduction in the global burden of malaria” had been achieved. A WHO report now confirms...

Even as the number of crib deaths reported from the state-run Dr. B.C. Roy Postgraduate Institute of Paediatric Science since Tuesday has risen to 13 (with one baby dying on Thursday), the Health authorities said there were no instances of medical negligence. Those who died were all very vulnerable and it would have been nearly impossible to save them. No negligence or any other reason was found that might have led...

-BBC   India has "never been closer" to wiping out polio, India's health minister has declared as he marked World Polio Day. There have been no new cases for more than nine months, making it the longest polio-free period since the global eradication campaign was launched. The only case reported this year was in the state of West Bengal in January. There were 39 cases reported over a similar period in 2010. India is one...

Close to one lakh children below the age of five years died of diarrhoea attributable to rotavirus infection in India in 2008, accounting for 22 per cent of the total deaths reported globally that year, the latest edition of the Lancet Infectious DISEases magazine has reported. Worldwide in 2008, diarrhoea related to rotavirus infection resulted in 4,53,000 deaths in children younger than 5 years — 37 per cent of deaths attributable...