Who will now be held responsible? Whose negligence is all this? And will the guilty face the music?

At least 350 girls in Tezpur and 45 in Mangaldoi fell ill after they were given folic acid tablets under a National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scheme in Sonitpur and Darrang district on Wednesday. The Mangaldoi DC has ordered a magistrate-level inquiry into the incident. Condemning the incident, the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) has demanded of the State government to find out the manufacturers of the tablets and punish them.

BHUBANESWAR: Even as Odisha battles with high incidence of diarrhoea among children, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) is all set to launch an extensive programme on ‘Management and prevention of childhood diarrhoea’ to combat the menace in the State. The programme would be launched in five districts of Rayagada, Kalahandi, Nabarangpur, Koraput and Kandhamal in association with Unicef and NRHM. These five districts, which are predominantly tribal, have been witnessing frequent outbreaks of cholera over the recent years.

LUCKNOW: The UP government on Monday cleared projects worth Rs 602 crore to check the dreaded Japanese encephalitis which has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past seven years. An inter-departmental committee headed by chief secretary Jawed Usmani finalized the projects for 20 affected districts of the state.

LUCKNOW: National Rural Health Mission's Project Approval Board has given UP more than what it asked for. The board not only sanctioned funds for projects worth Rs 3,187.57 crore, it also allowed the state to add unspent balance of about Rs 700 crore. Therefore, NRHM fund allocation for 2012-13 would be around Rs 4,500 crore - highest in the country for any state and highest ever for UP in the last seven years.

LUCKNOW: The state government will make a presentation on the National Rural Health Mission before the Union health ministry's project approval board on Thursday. The presentation will decide the allocations for UP for the financial year 2012-13. The proposal was finalized in the NRHM general body meeting held in mid-April. Headed by chief secretary Jawed Usmani, the apex body of NRHM approved the project implementation plan (PIP) worth Rs 3787.57 crore for the new fiscal. In 2011-12, UP's plan size for NRHM was about Rs 3,127 crore.

The magnitude of problem of malnutrition among children and anaemia amongst women in India, including Gujarat, is borne by the fact that 41 per cent of children are underweight and 55 per cent women are anaemic.

These grim realities were revealed by the Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Ms Krishna Tirath, in the Rajya Sabha in reply to a question raised by Mr Parimal Nathwani, Jharkhand MP and group President of Reliance Industries Ltd.

LUCKNOW: The routine immunisation campaign is all set to get its due attention. State unit of National Rural Health Mission has fixed annual targets for routine immunisation. Mission Director, NRHM, Mukesh Meshram said, "We have fixed targets for all health indicators of which routine immunisation is an important one. By the end of 2013 we hope to raise routine immunisation coverage to 50% and take it to 90% by the 2017, when the second phase of NRHM ends."

When the Lokayukta Police raided the palatial house of director (medical services) A N Mittal in Bhopal last week, his agitated wife dared them to target his political bosses to whom, she said, he periodically pays Rs 1 crore and “not small fry like us”. Her embarrassed husband had to silence her and take her inside. “Small fry” Mittal had property in excess of Rs 50 crore, according to preliminary estimates. The raid revealed not only the family’s taste for expensive personal accessories but the luxurious lifestyle their pet dogs, too, led in air-conditioned rooms.