NEW DELHI: The Centre on Thursday said Ayurveda and Unani interventions could be used for increasing the immunity to fight various flu-like conditions. These could be adopted by normal healthy persons as well as those with mild symptoms such as cold, cough and body pain.

NEW DELHI: The Union government will soon issue a fresh set of guidelines for schools to help them contain the spread of A (H1N1). It includes asking the authorities to avoid holding the morning assembly, cultural gatherings and any other kind of congregation.

Feed malnutrition with policy India has eight million malnourished children. Yet the country has no policy on what food should be given to treat malnutrition. Lack of policy has led international development agencies to adopt varied approaches like giving highly nutritious ready-to-use food. Such measures have often led to confusion and stand-offs with the government. unicef, for example,

India is yet to have an intelligence agency for diseases, despite facing epidemics every year
Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi August 2, 2009, 0:45 IST

A public health ministry acts as an intelligence agency for diseases. However, India is yet to have such a body, despite facing epidemics every year.

The Union health ministry along with US-AID is doing a project in seven districts in the state to identify susceptible areas of Avian Flu and measures that could be taken to prevent the spread of the disease.

The closure of all the three government-run vaccine manufacturing units in the country in January 2008 has had a major implication on the immunisation programme of the country in 2008-2009. Not only has there been a shortfall of vaccine, the government target achieved has been far less than what was envisioned.