There is a rush to cash in on micronutrient deficiency in India through fortification of food Andhra Pradesh Foods, a state government enterprise, is ramping up its fortified food production capacity. It provides ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook foods like upma mix, sweet porridge and khichdi mix, fortified with iron, zinc and other vitamins, to infants and pregnant and lactating women under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The effort to double its...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

A government panel has suggested the Centre revise its “no intervention” policy on the Jarawas of the Andamans and try to “empower” them rather than let them continue to be what an academic has described as “showpiece hunter-gatherers”. The panel wants the government to see if it can provide food and medical help —and possibly some education and housing — to these tribals inside the Jarawa Reserve without disrupting their lifestyle. It...

On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

India will soon ban blood tests to detect tuberculosis (TB) that are widely available across the country.  An expert group set up by the Drug Controller General of India has found that blood tests are mostly inaccurate for TB detection. It has recommended to the Union health ministry to immediately ban them.  A ministry official said "The DCGI had set up an eight-member committee to look at whether a proposal by the...