India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...

“Only one third of the journey has been completed” The last case of wild polio virus reported in India was exactly one year ago, on January 13, when stool samples showed that 18-month-old Rukhsar Khatoon in West Bengal had polio. She has since recovered, but it is the progress of whittling down from the largest number of cases in the world to zero that is fascinating to public health experts globally. Clearly,...

KEY TRENDS    • According to The State of the World's Children 2019 report, the proportion of children under 5 years who are either stunted, wasted or overweight was 54 percent for India in 2015, 49 percent for Afganistan, 46 percent for Bangladesh in 2014, 43 percent for Nepal in 2016, 43 percent for Pakistan in 2018, 40 percent for Bhutan in 2010, 32 percent for Maldives in 2009, 28 percent for Sri Lanka and 50...

KEY TRENDS    • The 2019 India TB report says that the country accounted for a quarter of the global tuberculosis (TB) burden with an estimated 27 lakh cases in 2018. In 2018, the country was able to achieve a total notification of 21.5 lakh TB cases, of which 25 percent was from private sector. Majority of the TB burden is among the working age group. Nearly 89 percent of TB cases came from the age group 15-69 years....