The proportion of children in the country's population has fallen to an all-time low of 13.5 per cent. That's a demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world, writes BLAINE HARDEN Japan celebrated a national holiday, last Monday, in honour of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning. For this is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world.

Even as health officials investigate the death of two children after they were administered Hepatitis B and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) vaccines, TOI has learnt of one more incident in which a two-month-old died this week, this time after taking the BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin) vaccine given to prevent childhood tuberculosis.

The mid-day meal programme, being run in the State, for school children at times makes headlines for all the wrong reasons. In several schools and anganwadis the tendency of providing sub-standard food or serving less food has become common. Government brings these schemes and programmes with good intentions but its implementation is not done properly. The basic aim of the mid-day meal plan is to create interest among the children towards school and study. On the one hand the children get food for one time in a day whereas in this pretext they come to study in schools.

Elementary education being the foundation of pyramid in the education system has been accorded high priority. To ensure "Education for All' the Department of School Education and Literacy has a multi pronged approach. Two flagship programmes are being implemented viz. the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the Mid-Day Meal Programme (MDM).

Mobile medical teams will now reach out to remote/hilly terrains for administering vaccines to children under the supervision of doctors. Besides, the government has formed a high-level committee of health experts to analyse the vaccination model that was introduced following the death of four children in Tiruvallur district on April 23. Official sources told The?Hindu here that the first meeting of the committee, headed by the Director of Public Health P. Padmanabhan, was held in Chennai on Friday.

A new Child Development and Nutrition Resource Centre, launched here earlier this week, will provide focused and rapidly usable information and other resources for early child care and development and nutrition for toddlers to promote healthy parenting among young couples and train the resource persons working in the rural areas.

The death toll from a viral illness that is striking children across China has risen by four to 34, while the number of reported infections jumped to nearly 25,000, state media reported Friday. Two of the latest deaths occurred in the hardest-hit central province of Anhui, where 22 children have already died of hand, foot and mouth disease, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The other two deaths were reported in the southern province of Guangdong and in neighboring Guangxi, the agency said.

THE efforts of a Geneva-based organisation called Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to set up an infant and young child nutrition (IYCN) alliance in India have raised the hackles of groups involved in the promotion of breastfeeding and child and infant survival.

India is on a high alert against Enterovirus 71 (EV-71), a causative agent for hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) that has infected over 20,000 children and killed around 40 of them, in at least four Asian countries over the past three months. China, which has recorded over 15,799 cases of HFMD and 28 deaths, has been the worst affected, followed by Vietnam where 3,000 children have been infected and 10 died. Singapore too has recorded around 10,490 cases while Hong Kong recently isolated the virus from two children.

According to the latest global report card, India ranks 27th along with Ghana and Eritrea when it comes to providing basic healthcare to its children, which includes life-saving interventions like prenatal care, skilled childbirth, immunization and treatment for diarrhoea and pneumonia. Over 53% children in India under five years