Even as the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment — dubbed “the Indian Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” — released its first report on the impact of climate change in four regions of the country, it admitted that significant research gaps and lack of extensive databases were hampering Indian climate science. Long-term localised data was not available on vegetation and forest cover, socio-economic trends, farm inputs, pests and crop diseases,...

Epidemic declared in Rajnandgaon and Bilaspur districts; 10 dead in Bilaspur State health officials have confirmed the outbreak of a Malaria epidemic in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon and Bilaspur districts. While the neighbouring districts of Durg and Koriya have also reported a spurt in Malaria cases, officials have embarked on a State-wide intervention programme to contain the disease. Health Secretary Vikas Sheel said 10 people had died of falciparum Malaria in Bilaspur thus far,...

In what could mean danger signals for Malaria stricken North-Eastern region including Assam, a new report has said that opportunities for Malaria transmission is likely to linger long enough even as the disease is projected to spread to new areas in the Himalayan region. In the North-Eastern region, there is a likelihood that the windows of transmission of Malaria may increasingly remain open for at least seven-nine months and may even...

As the country grapples with a “mixed burden” of diseases that beset the developing as well as developed countries, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday said adequate research was needed to deal with the challenge of non-communicable and re-emerging diseases. Addressing the centenary celebrations of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) here, Mr. Azad said as the country moved from a developing nation to the...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...