-The United Nations The number of people with dementia is projected to double to 65.7 million by 2030, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said today, noting that lack of diagnosis remains a major problem even in high-income countries, where only a fifth to half of cases are routinely recognized. Treating and caring for the estimated 35.6 million with dementia at present costs the world more than $604 billion per year,...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

The case of 18-month-old Sumi in West Bengal received adverse media publicity The government on Friday confirmed that an 18-month-old girl from West Bengal, who developed Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) earlier this month, tested negative for polio. Her stool samples tested negative for wild polio virus in the examination conducted in the Institute of Serology here. A section of the media flashed the case of Sumi Naskar from South 24 Parganas as polio...

Travelling in rural India always yields rich insights into how poor women struggle to provide that little extra, in terms of food, for the family meal. It was in the village of Vijaypura – in the drought prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh – that I came across Bharati, a 39-year-old farm woman and homemaker, working her everyday magic by laying out slices of potato and whole green chillies on the...

-The Times of India After being dormant for nearly a year, the H1N1 virus has made an appearance in Mumbai. A six-year-boy from Mulund tested positive for the virus that claimed several lives during and after the 2009 pandemic, and still continues to haunt neighbouring Pune. The virus had remained 'underground' for the better part of 2011, but suddenly struck Pune in March this year killing five and affecting 95 people in...