-Down to Earth In the run up to World Food Day on October 16, a Food and Agriculture Organization report focuses on the role of social protection in breaking the cycle of rural poverty The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) annual report on the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2015 explores the potential of social protection programmes in developing countries to tackle hunger and poverty. What is social protection? Social protection programmes...

The country has made significant gains in raising the rate of exclusive breastfeeding among infants from 46 to 65 percent between 2005-06 and 2013-14. This has been revealed by the 2015 Global Nutrition Report, which was released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in September. The report has quoted preliminary data on nutrition, which was collected via the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) in 29 states by the...

-The Indian Express It requires a far wider spectrum of interventions than mere clinical management. The latest edition of the Global Nutrition Report 2015 by the International Food Policy Research Institute, released on Tuesday, brings back the concerns over malnutrition into sharp focus. In July, the government of India, after much avoidable controversy, released malnutrition (used synonymously as undernutrition) figures from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSoC) data that was collected...

-PTI Nearly half of the infant deaths are tied to malnutrition, and 45 per cent occur during the first 28 days of life. Houston: Nearly 5.9 million children will die before their fifth birthday this year mainly of preventable causes, a UN report has warned, though the child mortality rate has fallen by more than 50 per cent since 1990. The mortality rate among children under five has fallen from 12.7 million...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has made public the National Health Policy 2015 Draft for discussion. The draft is more exhaustive and better organised in its coverage compared to the National Health Policy of 2002. It touches upon contemporary issues of concern, including the rapid emergence of chronic non-communicable diseases. From the latest available evidence, issues crucial to tackling chronic illness in India are discussed. Subrata...