Down to Earth Nirasiya Bai’s three sons are used to their mother fainting every other week. Small pieces of shakkar (brown sugar) are now kept handy and placed swiftly under her tongue every time she is on the verge of collapsing. In March alone, three such incidents have occurred. The 52-year-old resident of Shivtarai village in Chattisgarh’s Bilaspur district is a diabetes patient. Nearly every other family in the village houses...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Punjabis are the most obese people in the country, while men from Tripura and women from Meghalaya are the leanest, health minister JP Nadda told Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. According to the 2005-06 National Family Health Survey, the overall prevalence of obesity and diabetes have shown a consistent rise with 65, 66.8 and 69.1 million people between 20-79 years of age suffering from it in 2013,...

-The Hindu We cannot permit gross inequality-linked deprivation to leave its malign signature on the lives of those who are yet to come. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of the markets and financial speculation, and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution can be found for the world’s problems. Inequality is the root of social ills. —...

-Economic and Political Weekly Since independence, India's national health policies have been aspirational but the end results have been limited. The National Health Policy 2015, which is in the process of being finalised, should, in place of the earlier "broadband" approach, adopt a "narrow focus" on primary healthcare through the National Rural Health Mission. The latter has focused on primary healthcare and has shown visible results. A slew of suggestions as...

-The Hindu Millets in one's diet can help prevent diabetes,says Dr. Vijay Viswanathan Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder in which a person has high blood glucose (sugar), either because of inadequate insulin production, or because the body's cells do not respond properly to insulin, or both. Prolonged exposure to diabetes damages important organs like the eye, the kidney, the heart and nerves, as the result of damage to small blood vessels. Heredity,...