-Hindustan Times On November 15, Boston-based health news website Stat News cited official documents that purported to detail a series of problems in how Bharat Biotech’s coronavirus vaccine, funded partly by the government, was approved. The Union government and vaccine maker Bharat Biotech on Thursday refuted a report that alleged rules and protocols were bent during the approval process for Covaxin, but the clarifications served to further add to the questions that...

-The Hindu Policymakers can ill-afford to drop their guard in the fight against inflation October’s inflation data point to a welcome softening in price gains that should offer some succour to monetary policy authorities, who have been battling to rein in runaway inflation since the beginning of this year. Retail inflation, or price gains based on the Consumer Price Index, slowed to 6.77% last month, from September’s 7.41%, aided by an appreciable...

-The Telegraph The state government has neither made public the total number of dengue cases this year nor the number of deaths it caused Disregard for data, letting the large volunteer force created for Covid disappear following a sharp drop in cases, failure to spread awareness, love for denial.  The wild spread of dengue across West Bengal has bared lapses in the government’s combat strategy and the failure of health officials to learn...

-Frontline.in FAO’s latest report found world hunger rising. However, India’s data on food insecurity is missing. The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2022” report begins with a dismal piece of data: the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet has increased by 112 million to touch 3.2 billion, a reflection of rising food prices during the pandemic. The report, a joint effort...

-The Hindu A vast majority of snakebite deaths globally — up to 64,100 of the 78,600 deaths — occur in India with Uttar Pradesh reporting the highest number of deaths followed by Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan  That snakebite (a neglected tropical disease) is a public health problem in India and many other low- and middle-income countries has been long known. But a global estimate of deaths due to snakebite was not known...