While one year has passed without polio caused by natural poliovirus, we can claim complete eradication only after we ensure the absence of wild and vaccine polioviruses in the population. Today, India passes one whole year without polio caused by natural (wild) poliovirus — a major milestone towards polio eradication. This spells relief from an agonising decade of wild polioviruses refusing to surrender. Many experts believed that India posed the greatest...
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Polio free year, India’s greatest public health achievement: WHO
-PTI The United Nations and leading world organizations celebrated India’s first polio free year and termed it as a major milestone in their fight against this dreaded disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan, termed it as the “greatest public health achievement” of India, the Bill Gates, of Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation described it as a major milestone in the global fight against polio. “This is a major milestone in...
More »Food security: Delivering the promise efficiently by Ashok Gulati, Jyoti Gujral & T Nanda Kumar
To banish hunger and malnutrition from the country, Parliament is likely to pass the National Food Security Bill (NFSB). In our earlier article on this issue, Can we Afford Rs 6-Lakh-Cr Food Subsidy Bill in 3 Yrs? (ET, December 17, 2011), we concentrated on the likely financial implication that we estimated at roughly Rs 6,00,000 crore over a period of three years. In this piece, we address the operational challenges...
More »Around 13% of food samples found contaminated nationwide by Kounteya Sinha
After milk, the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has found contamination to be quite common among food items across the country. A comparative analysis has shown adulteration rates as high as 40% in Chhattisgarh, 34% in Uttarakhand, 29% in Uttar Pradesh, 23% in Rajasthan and 20% in West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh. Besides, nearly 17% of the food samples tested in Bihar and Chandigarh, 16% in Nagaland, 15% in...
More »AIDS agency orders cheap drug by Ankur Paliwal
Stavudine disfigures, affects peripheral nervous system permanently THE National AIDS Control Organisation in November procured in bulk anti-HIV drug stavudine, which is being phased out worldwide. NACO officials unofficially cite funds crunch for depending on the low-cost drug. Stavudine requires less monitoring of patients, they say. NACO provides free treatment to HIV/AIDS patients in the country. In 2010, the WHO had revised its HIV/AIDS treatment protocol and recommended countries to phase out...
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