When Jhintu Bariah, his wife Bimla and their three children died one after the other over a span of four weeks five months ago in Bolangir, the district administration had sanctioned an ex-gratia of Rs 10,000 for the family and dumped 25kg of rice at his house in Chhabripalli village, about 50km from Kantabanji town. Five months after it, Orissa High Court has decided to consider a probe to ascertain whether...

The Gender Hygiene Programme is attempting to change attitude towards menstrual hygiene It involves SHGs manufacturing inexpensive sanitary towels from cotton and tissue paper When women in rural areas are asked to spend Rs.15 on a packet of nine sanitary napkins, they respond by saying they would rather continue to use rags and spend the money on their husbands or children. But the Gender Hygiene Programme (GHP) launched here three years ago is...

For the preparation of the Commonwealth Games 2010, around Rs 17,400 crore have been spent on Delhi by the government over the past three years. The over-used word deployed by public leaders and officials to describe the city, which they hope will emerge from these exertions, is ‘world-class’. But forgotten are the men and women whose toil will make this ‘world-class’ city possible. At its peak in 2008-09, an estimated...

If climate change is indeed the biggest global health threat, public health professionals say that women and children in developing countries will be hit hardest. Research has shown that deep inequalities make them the most vulnerable to scarcity and disease when community sources start to shrink. “Malnutrition poses the biggest threat to children,” paediatrics professor Louis Reynolds said. “If temperature rises by 3 degrees centigrade, deaths from malnutrition will go up by...

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today issued new guidelines for malaria treatment, marking the first time the agency has released guidance on procuring safe and effective medicines to treat the disease. The agency warned that if not used properly, artemisinin-based combination therapy, known as ACTs, which have transformed treatment in recent years, could become ineffective. “The world now has the means to rapidly diagnose malaria and treat it...