Newborns in Jammu and Kashmir are more vulnerable to death in comparison to any other state, a survey by the Census Department has cautioned.

The survey under Sample Registration System (SRS) has shown that J&K was recording the highest death rate among neonates belonging to the age group of below 29 days.

The World Health Organization is expected to declare polio a global emergency after outbreaks in countries previously free of the disease.

The WHO wants to boost programmes in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only countries where the disease is still endemic.

It says tackling polio is "at a tipping point between success and failure".

India, once regarded as one of the most challenging countries, was declared free of the disease in February.

Even before educational institutions are officially directed to conduct admissions for the weaker sections, as under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (2009), activists have begun lining up outside schools demanding that poor students be taken in. Given that the government is yet to spell out how and when the schools should implement the 25% quota, expertsadvise activists against undue haste.

An alarming increase in Non Communicable Diseases viz. high blood pressure, arthritis and cholesterol, has been detected among school children, an expert warned.

CMC Ayurveda Department Chief Medical Officer Dr.Padma Shanthi revealed that over 80 percent of schoolchildren treated at 20 dispensaries in the city have Non Communicable Diseases, which she attributed to amongst others, environmental pollution, stress and consumption of fast foods.

Around the same time when Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were writing their Nobel story of rural empowerment, a woman in the humble districts of south Bengal started a micro-credit scheme similar to that of the Bangladeshi icon who was feted with the Peace prize in 2006. Madhuri Ghosh hadn’t heard of Yunus or his work when she formed the Bagnan I Mahila Bikash Co-operative Credit Society Ltd in 1997, but her feat is no less inspiring.

State Cabinet here on Wednesday took several important decisions. It decided to constitute Madhya Pradesh Water Corporation (MPWC) for implementation of group piped water schemes in rural area. The corporation will avail loans under prescribed procedure to run these schemes and other fiscal management. The Corporation will implement piped drinking water as well as sewage schemes in the urban areas as per requirement and supplying drinking water to families through water connections.

Every third malnourished child in the State is from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, reveals a study.

Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, and Koppal districts that comprise the Hyderabad-Karnataka region presents a shocking picture. Whereas the situation in Raichur is far worse than sub-Saharan countries and our own BIMARU states, the study notes. The HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition) report of the Naandi Foundation provides reliable estimates of the prevalence of severe malnutrition in 112 districts in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.

Dhaka: About 28 percent of Bangladesh's total population (41.7 million) is living in urban areas, said a Unicef report released on Wednesday.
Among the top 21 mega cities of the world, according to the report, Dhaka ranks 9th position with 14.3 million people, while Tokyo 1st with 36.5 million, Delhi 2nd with 21.7 million, Sao Paolo 3rd with 20.0 million.

A third of malaria drugs used around the world to keep the spread of the disease at bay are counterfeit, recent data has suggested. According to a study published in the reputed journal the Lancet, around 7 per cent of the drugs tested in India was found to be of poor quality with many being fake.

Researchers who looked at 1,500 samples of seven malaria drugs from seven countries in Southeast Asia said poor-quality and fake tablets are causing drug resistance and treatment failure. “Much of this morbidity and mortality could be avoided if drugs available to patients were efficacious, high quality, and used correctly,” said the Lancet.

Wars keep children out of school. So does sickness. But in Niger, a sun-baked land where drought occurs with alarming frequency, a major impediment to education is thirst and the long trek required to quench it.

The school day had already begun on a recent morning as a procession of small children on donkeys, school-age all, made their way over a sandy field, joining other youths gathered with their animals around deep holes in the ground.