The state has invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act in the textile town of Ichalkaranji in the wake of 12 Hepatitis E deaths and over 4,085 people infected in a month.

Maharashtra has invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act in the textile town of Icchalkaranji in the wake of 12 Hepatitis E deaths and over 4,085 people infected in a month.

Less than four months ago the world was cheered to learn that India had gone a full year with no new cases of polio - a landmark that left only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria on the World Health Organization's list of countries where the disease is endemic.

But the battle is far from over, judging by the WHO's latest expressions of alarm. It says that in both Nigeria and Afghanistan the number is creeping up, while budget shortfalls are jeopardising the effort to hold polio at bay in 24 other high-risk countries. Right now the numbers of new infections are small.

China faces a "serious epidemic" of drug-resistant tuberculosis according to the first-ever nationwide estimate of the size of the problem there, said a US-published study on Wednesday.

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the global tobacco epidemic kills nearly 6 million people each year, of which more than 600,000 are people who have been exposed to second-hand smoke (passive smoking).

Experts say the focus of the campaign is on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry's brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) because of the serious danger it poses to public health.

A US aid program aimed at helping foreign countries battle the AIDS epidemic saved 740,000 lives from 2004-2008, according to a US study published Tuesday.

Till now, doctors in the private sector were free to treat TB patients, and weren't required to keep a record. India has finally declared tuberculosis (TB) a notifiable disease.

It is not in the interest of food companies to advertise what their products contain, but it is in our interest to know

Junk food is junk by its very definition. But how bad is it and what is it that companies do not tell people about this food? This is what the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) laboratory checked. The results were both predictable and alarming. Equally predictable was the response of big food companies and their spokespersons — denials and dismissals. But they are missing the point.