-Mongabay.com * According to scientists, 40 percent of insect species are likely to become extinct globally in the coming years. Indian entomologists agree that India is already witnessing a slump in insect numbers. * Pollination, biological control, food provisioning, recycling organic matter, producing honey, silk, lac, medicines and food are just some of the reasons why we need insects. * Scientists rue the lack of adequate information and documentation on insects in India....

-Deccan Chronicle Farmers need to be educated on non-chemical methods. Nellore: Abnormal use of pesticides on vegetables and leafy vegetables has been discouraging gourmets from consuming vegetables not only due to fear over chemical residues also because of chemical odour even after cooking. Vegetable growers have been applying pesticides despite advice by entomologists against the practice pointing to threat to health from chemical residuals. Agriculture officials and scientists claim that they appeal to...

-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: Vector control is a baseless charade in Jharkhand, which grapples with a host of maladies like dengue, malaria, chikungunya, kala-azar and filaria every year and yet lacks a single specialist who can analyse and effectively arrest the scourge. Four posts of entomologists — two each for Ranchi and Hazaribagh zones — and two of assistant entomologists have been lying vacant for at least two years for reasons best known...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...