Use of verbal autopsy may result in many false positives: WHO Malaria has symptoms similar to many other diseases It cannot be correctly identified by local population Expressing serious doubts over the high estimates of 200,000 malaria deaths in India as reported in the latest edition of The Lancet, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday questioned the methodology adopted by the authors of the study. The Lancet uses verbal autopsy method which is...

The Andhra Pradesh Police on Friday said it has arrested three people working with SKS Microfinance and Spandana on a complaint of harassment by a borrower, and might book the companies' respective promoters Vikram Akula and Padmaja Reddy under a new Ordinance to check coercive methods of loan recovery. The borrower, Ammulu, filed the complaint with the Yemmiganur police station in Kurnool district, about 270 km from Hyderabad, last night. A...

The Millennium Development declaration was a visionary document, which sought partnership between rich and poor nations to make globalisation a force for good. Its signatories agreed to explicit goals on a specific timeline. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set ambitious targets for reducing hunger, poverty, infant and maternal mortality, for reversing the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and giving children basic education by 2015. These also included gender equality,...

Claims about the benefits of Posco's $12 billion integrated steel project to Orissa's economy and job market come from a study by an “independent” research organisation — but was paid for by Posco itself. In January 2007, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) published a report on ‘Social Cost Benefit Analysis of the POSCO Steel Project in Orissa,' which claimed that the project would directly and indirectly generate 8.7...

Financial sector expert Y.H. Malegam will head a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) panel to look into the functioning of microfinance institutions or MFIs and their regulations. The MFIs are in the business of giving tiny loans. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Shashi Rajagopalan and U.R. Rao – all on the boards of the Indian central bank – and RBI deputy governor K.C. Chakrabarty are the members of the panel. The committee, which will...