-The Hindu     The critical issue in India, where the pentavalent vaccine is being rolled out, is raising the coverage levels of immunisation "Immunisation is not an election issue. It should be." Seth Berkley, CEO, GAVI Alliance, is not known for mincing his words. Throw in the immense experience he brings in from the area of vaccination, and he is easily the most articulate global proponent of immunisation. In India recently to meet...

-The Business Standard The challenge to anti-inflation policy lies in better institutions and better evidence-based policy Our failure to rein in inflation has been costly. Economically, it has hurt growth. Poor and urban middle-class households have been affected the most. A combination of slowing growth and high inflation has weakened our macro-fundamentals: households fled financial savings, domestic and foreign investors lost confidence, and the rupee plunged. Politically, it has been a disaster. For...

-The Hindu On January 13, 2011, an 18-month-old infant in Howrah district of West Bengal was found to have been crippled by a naturally occurring wild strain of the polio-causing virus. However, no more children fell victim to such viruses over the next one year and India was then removed from the list of countries where polio is endemic. India has remained free of polio, and analysis of sewage samples have...

-Down to Earth It can help reduce diarrhoea prevalence by 47 per cent among children Better sanitation facilities can significantly help improve children's health. A World Bank report, published on January 6, states that prevalence of diarrhoea can be reduced by 47 per cent among children if they are provided improved sanitation facilities at home as well as in their community. The report, Sanitation and Externalities, analysed the data of 206,414 children under...

-Frontline Childhood TB has been neglected for decades, but in the past few years the WHO has begun to realise its real impact in terms of incidence, prevalence and mortality. THE number of annual new tuberculosis (TB) cases in India has been nearly 2.2 million for the past couple of years. Many of these infected people would have been in contact with children aged under five years before being diagnosed and,...