Twenty-five years have passed since that night of terror and death in Bhopal, which saw a cloud of deadly gases explode out of a faulty tank in a pesticide factory and silently spread into the homes of sleeping people. Although no official count of casualties has ever been done, estimates based on hospital and rehabilitation records show that about 20,000 people died and about 5.7 lakh suffered bodily damage, making...

On the completion of two decades of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the global community is nowhere close to making this world a better, safer and healthier place for its children. The biggest challenges continue to be in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where primary health care, education and protection from poverty, DISEases, exploitation and abuse are still big problems. In the area of under five mortality ratings,...

CPI(M) demands immediate tabling of long-pending Bill to provide legal aid to victims Eradication of the dreaded DISEase one of the toughest challenges for mankind: Meira Kumar Taking up the cause of HIV/AIDS victims, members of the Lok Sabha on Tuesday pledged to re-dedicate themselves to creating awareness of the DISEase and taking concrete steps to check and eventually eradicate it. On the occasion of World AIDS Day, Speaker Meira Kumar said eradication...

There are now one billion hungry people on the globe, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said recently. A statistic that is shameful and shocking at the same time. The global financial crisis too has led to a dramatic rise in hunger across the world. Ban warned that the food crisis is a wake-up call for tomorrow since by 2050 the planet's population will be 9.1 billion people, over two billion more...

A deadly and highly infectious animal DISEase which affects cattle and other hoofed livestock is set to be only the second virus in history, behind small pox in 1980, to be eliminated from the face of the Earth, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced today. Rinderpest, a devastating viral DISEase which is also known as cattle plague, will be officially declared eradicated within the next 18 months...