-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In the aftermath of the Bihar mid-day meal (MDM) tragedy that resulted in the death of more than 20 children, the HRD ministry on Thursday announced setting up a new 20-member committee to go into the quality aspect of the MDM scheme nationwide. The committee, to be headed by HRD minister M M Pallam Raju, would have secretaries of ministries of women & child development, health,...

-The Hindu     The Kerala government has not learnt anything from the Attappady tragedy. Nutrition levels of women and children, most of them tribals, continue to remain dismal in the area At the Agali Community Health Centre in Attappady, Palakkad district, Kerala, Kavitha tends to her four-year-old child lying listlessly on the cot, critically ill. The doctor says the child is severely malnourished. He also says there are eight such infants and children,...

-Down to Earth     Rural development minister shares concerns of activists at launch of Lancet series; stresses community role in fight against malnutrition India needs to be careful when it comes to agriculture-based nutrition as it opens the door for advocacy for transgenic food, said Jairam Ramesh, Union rural development minister, at the launch of the Lancet Series on Maternal and Child Nutrition. Ramesh was the chief guest at the programme on June...

-Down to Earth     Series of papers calls for engaging private sector in fighting malnutrition Lancet, the world's leading general medical journal, recently published four papers on nutrition. Its plan to release the papers formally in India on Friday has angered the country's public health experts. Lancet has called for engaging private sector in fighting malnutrition. UNICEF estimates say about 46 per cent of all children below three in India are too small...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Several nutrition experts and members of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics, the largest association of paediatricians in India, have warned that the new set of papers on malnutrition published in the medical journal, Lancet, "should not be allowed to become an opportunity for commercial exploitation of malnutrition". "The call for engaging with the "private sector" and unregulated marketing of commercial foods for preventing malnutrition in children...