-DNA Mumbai has more undernourished children under the age of five than the whole of urban Maharashtra. Experts say malnutrition is prevalent amongthe slum dwellers, migrant labours and the city’s minority communities. A recent report on malnutrition, titled ‘India’s nutrition crisis: A challenge of putting nutrition back in our food’ by Narotam Sekhasaria Foundation, an NGO, reveals that more than half of the country’s upcoming generation— children under four years of age...

-The Indian Express In 2000, when Sutia village of West Bengal was virtually ruled by alleged rapists, a young schoolteacher stood up to them, starting a movement that helped villagers overcome their fear. Villagers say the gangsters, primarily extortionists, had punished a number of reluctant donors by gang-raping the women of their homes, often in front of the rest of the family. The fear this created had stamped out any hopes of...

Tuberculosis re-emerges as a major threat as new drug-resistant strains develop because of mismanagement of the disease. At the beginning of the year, doctors at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre reported that they had 12 patients infected with TDR-TB, or totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a condition in which the TB bacilli is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used in the conventional treatment of the disease. Panic...

-The Indian Express The government will be analysing mortality figures during drug trials in India following WHO data showing that 2,031 people died between 2008 and 2011 in such trials in the country. That amounts to about 10 people per week, or more than one person a day. At the same time, the data shows that only 1.5 per cent of clinical trials held across the world so far (2,770 of 1,76,641)...

-IANS Eating fruits and vegetables every day can reduce your risk of developing heart disease by 20 percent, a World Health Organization (WHO) study showed.  Death rates from heart disease are twice as high among people who eat diets high in saturated fat, trans fats and salt such as junk food, Xinhua quoted the study as saying. More people around the world die from cardiovascular diseases than any other causes.  These diseases were responsible...