-Down to Earth India’s GDP for health is less than 1.5 per cent and is one of the lowest in the world Health infrastructure, especially in the rural areas, is going to be one of the challenging tasks ahead for the new government. In its last tenure, it brought the Ayushman Bharat scheme — the government run health insurance programme — which was seen as a major health policy intervention. However, according...

  The Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (MoWR, RD & GR) in its latest report has identified arsenic hotspots across the country, most notably in the states of Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Please consult chart-3 to get an idea about the geographical spread of arsenic hotspots in India. On the basis of arsenic concentration in the range 0.01-0.05 mg per litre...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Mumbaikars can now drink water straight from the tap, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) hydraulic engineer Ashok Tawadia said. According to BMC, an average 0.7% of water samples collected daily across Mumbai between April 2018 and March 2019 tested positive for Coliform bacteria, a group of microorganisms present in water bodies that indicate water may not be fit for drinking. This is far better than the WHO...

-The Telegraph For a country with more free-roaming dogs than the entire population of Australia, India fares poorly in tackling rabies Arnav, the seven-year-old son of a Mumbai police constable, suffered serious bites on his face and body by a rabid dog in 2018. He was taken to four different hospitals before being properly diagnosed; he passed away shortly after. His case is just one among the 20,000 annual canine-origin human rabies...

-Outlook   Introduced to Nutrition Sensitive Integrated Farming System (NSIFS), or Poshan Kheti, by JEEViKA, Sushma Devi found that food produced in the family farm and kitchen garden was the perfect solution to feed her family sufficiently. Sushma Devi, a small farmer in Purnea, Bihar, was not able to provide diverse foods to her family of six members - comprising her husband, in-laws and children. Each of them has different dietary...