-The Hindu Its fifth edition has encouraging news but addressing discriminatory social norms must remain top priority The health system in India has been facing unprecedented stress during the COVID-19 pandemic which includes the looming Omicron threat now on the horizon. Against this backdrop, the recently released fifth edition of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 brings some positive news. NFHS-5, which presents a bird’s eye view of the state of the...

-The Hindu Education and exposure to a community health worker too score higher than age of marriage in accessing a facility, says study. Poverty, education, and exposure to a community health worker are more important than age at marriage in determining whether a mother will be able to have a safe birth in a medical facility, according to a first-of-its-kind study on utilisation of institutional delivery in the country. The research comes at...

After the release of the second phase data of the National Family Health Survey Fifth Round (NFHS-5), media commentators and experts have written that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for India has gone down just below the replacement-level fertility. The TFR for the entire nation was 2.2 in 2015-16, which decreased to 2.0 in 2019-21.   According to the United Nations, the replacement-level fertility is reached when the TFR of a...

The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Down to Earth Rate of returns for females higher than that of males; intervention to address gaps in India’s mental healthcare for adolescents need India has the highest adolescent population in the world — the country is home to over 250 million adolescents, according to India’s 2011 Census.  This has increasingly built a case for investing in them. The Population Foundation of India, a non-profit, commissioned a study ‘Investing in Adolescent Development, which examines...