Despite significant improvement in infant mortality rates over the years, only six states in India are on course to meet the UN millennium development goal of 26 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Increasing amounts of industrial waste are being pumped into the Ganga river, transforming its waters into killer pollutants.

Court asks Centre to spell out its stand

The Supreme Court has appointed an expert committee to go into all aspects of the ban on endosulfan and the disposal of the existing quantity of the pesticide. The court has asked the Centre to spell out its stand on the manufacture and use of endosulfan in the country.

A Bench comprising Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice Madan B. Lokur, hearing a writ petition filed by the Democratic Youth Federation of India on Tuesday, said the committee to be headed by the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) would have the Member-Secretary of the Centre Pollution Control Board, two scientists, and the Joint Secretary of Plant Protection from the Agriculture Ministry on it.

New Delhi: Testing blood sugar levels will now take just about a minute, cost less than Rs 2 and require 1,000 times lesser blood than what glucose meters currently use.

The Supreme Court directs the Central and Madhya Pradesh governments and the ICMR to address the health needs of the Bhopal gas victims.

KOLKATA, 16 SEPT: Constant travelling and rapid urbanisation of rural areas have contributed to a nearly 50-fold increase in dengue cases over the last 50 years, say experts.

A month after the Delhi High Court issued notices to the Delhi government and the Centre in a petition to stop installation of mobile towers near residential areas, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit ha

Press for universal public distribution system

Right to Food Campaign—a conglomeration of civil society groups — on Tuesday held a day-long protest at Jantar Mantar here, raising seven questions with MPs on the proposed National Food Security Bill, particularly in relation to people going hungry when the country has surplus food stocks. Rejecting the proposed amendments to the Bill that might reduce beneficiaries and entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS), they sought to know why a food security bill is needed.

Kerala Health Minister V.S. Sivakumar may have constituted a high-level panel to probe allegations of illegal drug trials on humans, but it may not just be enough to deal with clandestine clinical research.

Recently a private centre near Thiruvananthapu- ram medical college hospital was sealed following reports that the institution had carried out more than 40 unauthorised tests.

Alarmed by the rise in illegal drug trials in the country and the lack of effective laws for their monitoring, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is mulling guidelines for clinical trials. The NHRC has written to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and other premier medial institutes in the country to suggest the names of experts to assist the commission in framing the guidelines.

Recently, the unauthorised drug trials had caused great concern in the country after the Drug Controller-General of India (DCGI) revealed that 2061 persons died during drug trials between the period from January 2008 to January 2012.