India has not reported a single polio case over the past one year, but Bihar has gone a step further by maintaining a clean slate for the past 16 months. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently deleted India from the list of polio endemic countries, the first time that the country has been ticked out of the map. The last polio case in India was reported from Howrah district of Bengal on...

Just over five years ago, a global study had labelled India the world’s “lone polio exporter”, prompting the United Nations secretary-general to write a letter of concern to Manmohan Singh. Even three years ago, anti-polio workers in western Uttar Pradesh, then the disease’s epicentre in India, were often abused and driven away when they came to the villages for the vaccination programme. Such memories today flooded into the minds of doctors and...

-The United Nations   The annual flagship report of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will this year focus on the challenges and disadvantages faced by children worldwide who live in cities and other urban areas.   More than a billion children, or over half the global population of minors, are now estimated to live in urban areas, according to UNICEF, which is releasing the report entitled “The State of the World’s Children 2012”...

There is a rush to cash in on micronutrient deficiency in India through fortification of food Andhra Pradesh Foods, a state government enterprise, is ramping up its fortified food production capacity. It provides ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook foods like upma mix, sweet porridge and khichdi mix, fortified with iron, zinc and other vitamins, to infants and pregnant and lactating women under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The effort to double its...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh is seeking doubling of funds for water supply and sanitation programmes to Rs 20,000 crore in the upcoming budget, arguing that it is high time the Centre focused on this neglected sector.  Ramesh, who holds the additional charge of the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, has indicated that he is unwilling to settle for anything short of Rs 16,000 crore. The finance ministry has, so...