-The Hindu The rate of handwashing shot up from just one per cent to 37 per cent in just six months One of effective public health interventions and the most elementary hygiene ritual - washing hands - can help prevent diarrhoea that annually kills 8,00,000 children aged below five years. Yet, surveys show that handwashing remains at best "suboptimal" across the world, whether in India, Ghana, China - or even in parts...

-Live Mint The health insurance scheme was expanded to cover a larger number of the poor in June New Delhi: The government has asked the independent evaluation office (IEO) to study the government's health insurance scheme, its director general said on Wednesday. The IEO, announced in 2009, was inaugurated on Wednesday. The cabinet has decided the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (national health insurance scheme) will be evaluated by IEO, director general Ajay Chhibber...

-The Guardian International Monetary Fund paper dismisses rightwing argument that redistributing incomes is self-defeating   The International Monetary Fund has backed economists who argue that inequality is a drag on growth in a discussion paper that has also dismissed rightwing theories that efforts to redistribute incomes are self-defeating. The Washington-based organisation, which advises governments on sustainable growth, said countries with high levels of inequality suffered lower growth than nations that distributed incomes more evenly. Backing...

-The Hindu In the case of technologies with benefits and risks, it is important to have regulatory mechanisms which can help analyse them in an impartial manner It is 61 years since the beginning of new genetics based on the discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. It is also 31 years since the production of transgenic plants. The first patent for a living organism went to Dr. Anand...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: A paste to fight malnutrition! Yes, that's precisely what a team of researchers at IIT-Kharagpur has developed. It is food in a tube, rich in micronutrients, minerals, vitamins, proteins and all dietary needs, in the form of paste, which, the researchers feel, will be an effective tool to fight severe acute malnutrition between kids of six months to six years. It can also be an...