The UNICEF in association with the Amala Institute of Medical Science will implement a model community action programme at Adattu panchayat in the district to improve child health. Millions of children die from preventable causes before reaching their fifth birthday, many of them during the first year of life, according to health statistics. It is estimated that seven out of 10 childhood deaths are from just five causes - pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, malaria and malnutrition. This is when the capacity to prevent and treat these diseases exists.

People who face the threat of land acquisition are already up in arms as the survey for the high speed railway corridor from Thiruvananthapuram to Mangalore is progressing in Thrissur district.

The project has invited the wrath of people in the survey period itself as there are complaints that the railway corridor passes through highly populated residential areas.

For months now, mounds of garbage have been piling up in public places across Kerala, from the capital to district headquarters to scores of small municipal towns.

Samithi says Suchitwa Mission is trying to set up plant

The Lalur Malineekarana Viruddha Samara Samithi has protested against the alleged move to install a centralised waste management plant at Lalur. In a memorandum to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Thursday, the Samara Samithi alleged that the Suchitwa Mission had called applications for setting up a centralised plant at Lalur with 250-tonne capacity a day.

The talks held here on Wednesday between the Thrissur Corporation and the Lalur Malineekarana Viruddha Samara Samithi to solve garbage issue in the city failed to yield any result.

The garbage disposal from the city had been hit since last January after residents of Lalur, the garbage disposal site of Thrissur Corporation, blocked dumping of waste following a major fire at the dumping yard. Mayor I.P. Paul urged the Samara Samithi leaders to cooperate with the civic body to dispose of the garbage from the city.

93 per cent flats in city lack waste management system

The Corporation of Thrissur has given an ultimatum to the 200-odd flats in the city to have their own waste management system soon. By June-end, apartment complexes in the city will have to choose a suitable waste treatment system to process garbage at the source level. As the dumping of garbage at Lalur dumpyard has been hit for more than five months, the Corporation has decided to make independent source-level garbage treatment facilities mandatory for apartment complexes, hotels and marriage halls.

Kerala on Monday said it cannot accept recommendations of the Madhav Gadgil report on Western Ghats as most of its suggestions were impractical to implement and said the State could protect its environment within provisions of existing laws.

“The Gadgil report places several restrictions on human activities in the Western Ghats and is impractical to implement in the state. Kerala can protect its environment with the provisions of the existing laws,” Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said in the Assembly.

Kerala's plant biodiversity faces a severe threat from 89 alien invasive species, which were recorded in a survey commissioned by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board.

Of these, 19 present a high risk; many were found displacing and destroying a large number of native species, causing environmental and economic loss. Around 40 per cent of the varieties belonging to Brazil, Trinidad, Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico were believed to have reached the State mostly through timber and food grain imports,

Revenue Minister Adoor Prakash on Sunday directed District Collector P.M. Ali Asgar Pasha to take stern action against illegal sand-mining from the Bharathapuzha in Shoranur.

Besides illegal sand-mining, hundreds of acres of the riverbed, dried up during the summer, has been converted into vegetable farms. The authorities have not yet taken any action against this.

New options for processing degradable and plastic waste are being considered for Kochi.

The civic administrators of Kochi, who are touring Pune and Delhi for familiarising themselves with the innovative techniques of management of municipal solid waste, have extended invitations to two groups to demonstrate their methods in the city. A company operating a plant capable of producing fuel from plastic and another one which owns the technology for converting biodegradable waste into manure in 10 days have been invited to Kochi.