-Live Mint Melinda Gates says India is closer than ever to the goal of eradicating poverty and improving access to health for all New Delhi: Philanthropist Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and one of the most influential women in the world, maintains that India is closer than ever to the goal of eradicating poverty and improving access to health for all. In their annual letter, published...

-The Times of India Silently, the warp and weft of Indian families is changing, perhaps forever. Women are getting married later, they are having babies later and the gap between successive children is getting larger. Put this together with the fact that the average number of children born to a woman continues to decline, and children survive more than in the past, and you can see that families are being much...

-The Indian Express The country's demography is witnessing some new trends. While the working age group (15-64 years) has predictably seen an increase in the number of youths, the curtains may have begun falling over the baby boom years that fuelled this bulge in the first place. These have been indicated by the latest 'Single Year Age Data' released by the Census of India from its 2011 census numbers. While the increase...

-The Times of India BHOPAL: Women health workers in Madhya Pradesh are refusing to distribute condoms in a government-sponsored family planning measure, citing it as an exercise 'against their dignity'. "We are working for the implementation of other schemes and initiatives, but this is awkward. It is against our dignity," said Mithlesh Vishwakarma, president of ASHA (accredited social health activists) workers association in Damoh district. ASHA workers are either daughters- in-law or...

-The Hindu     Enhancing the basket of contraceptive choices can reduce maternal mortality rate, says a family planning review Family planning has made a silent comeback in the national discourses. This time, focussing more on concomitant improvement in the health of the people rather than limiting the number of children. India had changed its strategy on family planning in 2010 with the other developing countries from that of merely reducing population to that of...