-The Hindu Angul Pusti Adhikar Abhiyan, a community level forum organized this ‘egg relay competition’ to promote intake of nutritious food. BHUBANESWAR: When there is a lot of taboo around consumption of egg and chicken products among women in remote Odisha villages, mothers competing with their kids in swallowing boiled eggs in Angul district is surely an unusual sight. But Angul Pusti Adhikar Abhiyan (APAA), a community level forum promoting intake of nutritious...

  In the month of June this year, encephalitis related deaths in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district grabbed the headlines. Actually, most of the children, who were admitted or died at Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), hailed from East Champaran, Vaishali, Sitamarhi and Samastipur apart from Muzaffarpur. Unfortunately, till recently official data on the number of cases and deaths related to Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) was unavailable for...

-The Hindu It is imperative to promote community-based care rather than relying only on hospital services The deaths of 154 children in Bihar due to acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) has laid bare the precarious capacity of the State’s healthcare apparatus to handle outbreaks. AES has been linked to two factors: litchi consumption by starving children and a long, ongoing heat wave. As promises of bolstering the health infrastructure are being made, it...

-The Economic Times According to Dr Arun Shah of the IAP, the Nitish Kumar govt failed to implement the guidelines drafted in 2015 to prevent a similar outbreak. NEW DELHI: While litchi is mostly being blamed for the outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district that has claimed lives of more than 100 children, experts maintain that malnutrition and the recently-held Lok Sabha elections are actual culprits. According to Muzaffarpur-based...

-The Indian Express Instead of embarking on a massive administrative exercise with uncertain benefits, it is possible to think of another combination of public interventions that would actually ensure minimum income to a much larger proportion of the population. The Congress party’s recent declaration that, if voted to power, it will seek to ensure a minimum income to 20 per cent of the poorest households in the country, is laudable in...