Over 300 million Indians still defecate in the open: WHO-UNICEF report

One-third of the world’s population, about 2.4 billion people, will remain without access to improved sanitation in 2015, according to a report recently published  jointly by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF). The report says that three south Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal have shown significant improvement in the past 20 years. In India, however, more than the quarter of the population still practices open defecation.

309,000 infants die on first day

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Politics of irrigation

Most irrigation bureaucracies believe problems of farmers end once water is delivered on to a block of land. Irrigation is an essential component of agriculture but it is not neutral. More often than not it reaches rich farmers. This can affect poor farmers unless there is concerted social action to counter the effect. Introducing farmer managed irrigation systems (FMIS), too, has not helped.

Wake up and smell the air

Our health is not on anybody’s agenda. Or, we just don’t seem to make the connections between the growing burden of disease and the deteriorating condition of our environment. We don’t really believe the science, which tells us each passing day how toxins affect our bodies, leading to high rates of both morbidity and mortality.

High BP, tobacco are top killers

DISEASE patterns are changing world over. Deaths from infectious diseases, poor nutrition and maternal and child illnesses, which used to be the key global killers two decades ago, are down. More people today die of non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure and due to tobacco and alcohol consumption. This is one of the key findings of a study on the global burden of disease, published in The Lancet on December 13, 2012.

The phoenix act

Dam in check

Double whammy

After killing its lifeline, the Bagmati, Kathmandu valley is extracting its groundwater to the last drop. But the quality of groundwater here is fast deteriorating due to lack of proper sewage disposal system and years of overexploitation, warn analysts.

Renal emergency

P G Jayasingha sat on his bed with a bloated stomach. Both his kidneys had failed and he was unable to pass urine. He could not drink water despite being thirsty. His arms and legs would constantly ache and his eyesight had failed him. That was in February when Down To Earth visited him.

India’s Child Development Index ranking drops

While the world has made significant progress in child health, education and nutrition in the past decade, India has fared poorly among middle-income countries. It has been given a ranking of 112 in the Child Development Index (CDI) report released by the non-profit Save the Children. This is much lower than the ranking of 103 in 2004.