Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme. When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are queuing...

World Tuberculosis Day to be observed today 2 million people successfully treated annually through DOTS Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the biggest threats to public health in the World Health Organisation (WHO) - South-East Asia Region, causing one death a minute. Although the total number of people affected by the disease has steadily declined in the last decade, there are five million people living with TB in the region — a third...

The United Nations health agency today released its first ever list of the most vital medicines for saving the lives of mothers and children, and stressed the need to ensure their availability in developing countries. The list of the top 30 medicines includes oxytocin, a drug used to treat severe bleeding after childbirth, the leading cause of maternal death, as well as simple antibiotics to treat pneumonia, which kills an estimated...

The tsunami in Japan has rekindled a debate on coastal protection with sections of scientists claiming that bad science has been used to wrongly portray mangroves as bioshields against tsunamis and waves from cyclones. Sections of environmental scientists and oceanographers have said the best defence appears to be mounds of sand and mud, and cautioned that it would be misleading to promote coastal vegetation as barriers against giant waves. In the wake...

The number of children dying due to immunization-related complications has more than tripled after the government closed down three public sector vaccine labs in January 2008. The government has no clue about the causes while children continue to die, the latest being that of five infants in Gujarat on Wednesday. Details given by the Union ministry of health and family welfare in reply to an RTI query filed by Dr K...