-TheNewsMinute.com Workers in these industries are prone to several health vulnerabilities including hearing loss, respiratory illnesses, and musculoskeletal discomfort, that need to be better understood and addressed. Bronchitis, tuberculosis, weight loss and hearing loss are oft-heard health problems among workers of fine-dust producing industries in the Tirupur-Coimbatore region in Tamil Nadu. With a plethora of cotton spinning mills, garment units and power looms, these fine dust producing industries are the primary employers...

-Scroll.in The focus is on providing food grains to the very poor as against supporting that with more funding for existing nutrition-focussed welfare programmes. Data collated from a recent paper -studying the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 by Jean Dreze and Anmol Somanchi reflect the grim condition of India’s looming malnutrition crisis. In a co-authored essay around April 2020, we had argued how the “hidden costs of this pandemic” (and the...

-The Hindu Focus on severe ailments, combination of diseases excluding many: experts The Union Health Ministry’s list of 20 comorbidities that make people in the 45-59 year age group eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine is seen by some medical professionals as too narrow. “The list of comorbidities provided by the Health Ministry is overly restrictive and complicated. Many conditions, including obesity, have been left out,” said Dr. Gagandeep Kang, Professor of Microbiology at...

-The Hindu Physicians are confronted with a complex problem that involves multiple organ systems Medical students are taught to classify diseases as either congenital or acquired. Acquired diseases are infectious or inflammatory, nutritional or metabolic, vascular or neoplastic (tumours, benign or malignant). COVID-19 is acquired, infectious/inflammatory. The microbe is SARS-CoV-2. What are co-morbidities and why do they make COVID-19 severe and life-threatening? Chronic nutritional/metabolic diseases start as diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome or obesity....

-Down to Earth Stunting among children below five did not improve at all; child obesity increased across several states Chronic malnutrition or stunting among children below five years did not improve at all while acute undernourishment or wasting worsened in the last half-a-decade in a majority of the surveyed states and Union territories (UT), according to the latest round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5). Child obesity also increased in several states. The...