The next stage of a measles immunization drive supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) began today in India, aiming to reach 134 million children and prevent an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 annual deaths from the disease. The children in the states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh will begin receiving the second dose of their vaccinations as part of a year-long campaign by the...

Are some tribal groups in Koraput and Mayurbhanj on the brink? The answer seems to be in affirmative if the rate of child mortality among the tribals is any indication. The child mortality rate of the tribals in 1997-98 was 44 but it has surged to over 62 per 1000, says the latest study by Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement in association with the World Health Organisation. The Study has conducted...

In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...

Exposed, untreated excrement can kill by the million. One of the hardest-won UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a 2015 target of halving the proportion of those without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Even if achieved, the target would still leave some 500 million on the planet without this basic requirement for survival and dignity. As many as 79 per cent of rural and 46 per...

VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...