Use of verbal autopsy may result in many false positives: WHO Malaria has symptoms similar to many other DISEases It cannot be correctly identified by local population Expressing serious doubts over the high estimates of 200,000 malaria deaths in India as reported in the latest edition of The Lancet, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday questioned the methodology adopted by the authors of the study. The Lancet uses verbal autopsy method which is...

Malaria kills around 205,000 people in India each year, more than 13 times the estimate made by the World Health Organization, researchers said on Thursday. WHO, the public health arm of the UN, estimates that approximately 15,000 people a year die from malaria in India, and 100,000 adults worldwide. The researchers called for both figures to be urgently revised so they do not hurt funding for prevention, rapid diagnosis and treatment. “If you...

The World Health Organisation today challenged the findings of the study that has suggested that India witnesses far more malaria deaths than is documented by the government or estimated by the WHO. The study by Indian and Canadian researchers indicated that malaria kills about 205,000 people in India each year, a figure 200-fold higher than the health ministry’s count, and 18 times the WHO estimate, as reported in The Telegraph today. A...

The Millennium Development declaration was a visionary document, which sought partnership between rich and poor nations to make globalisation a force for good. Its signatories agreed to explicit goals on a specific timeline. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set ambitious targets for reducing hunger, poverty, infant and maternal mortality, for reversing the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and giving children basic education by 2015. These also included gender equality,...

Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad called for a "jihad" against tobacco use after a report released on Tuesday identified India as the world's second largest consumer of tobacco. An estimated 274.9 million Indians consume tobacco, the first Global Adult Tobacco Survey said. Nearly 0.9 million tobacco-related deaths occur in India annually as compared to 5.5 million world wide. India is also the world's third largest producer of tobacco, the report added. "A...