By Syed Akbar

Hyderabad, July 29: How much salt, sugar, chilli, turmeric, ginger-garlic paste or garam masala is good for an average Indian if India is to be a healthy nation?

The Centre has taken up a massive exercise to revise dietary guidelines for Indians after a 10-year gap. People can decide what type and what quantity of food is desirable. Suggestions/comments have been invited, based on which a panel of health and nutrition experts will finalise the new guidelines.

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev has agreed to impart yoga training to 5.4 lakh Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) recruited under the government's flagship National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). This was decided at a meeting between Baba Ramdev and Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Tuesday. While the procedural details will be worked out later, Baba Ramdev has agreed to send experts to all villages to train ASHAs in yoga who, in turn, will conduct yoga classes for the people.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has sought from the Planning Commission an allocation of Rs.9,000 crore for implementing the National Urban Health Mission during the 11th Plan. Disclosing this to reporters here on Sunday, Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the mission would be implemented in slum areas in 429 cities and towns, covering a slum population of five crore. The National Organ Transplant Programme and the National Emergency and Trauma Care Programme were the two major national programmes to be launched by the Ministry shortly.

The Directorate of Public Health will soon launch a scheme to provide

From getting chilled in a spa to receiving super-speciality treatment under one roof might become a reality in the near future with a mega health project proposed on the city outskirts. Dubbed

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi are paying special attention to the north-eastern States and all developmental projects will be taken up expeditiously, said Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss. He was addressing the staff of the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) which had been taken over by the Central government. Mr. Ramadoss was accompanied by Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Panabaka Lakshmi on his two-day visit to Manipur that ended on Wednesday.