Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
A recent study commissioned by the Confederation of Indian Industry (cii) has recommended a greater private role in India's healthcare sector. Its salience is that better services can be provided only if private players invest in the segment. There is, however, a catch: the document centres around the lucrative tertiary …
Why is it so difficult to control HIV/AIDS after all we know? The disease is linked with immorality and promiscuity. People don't want to accept these issues or discuss perceptions of them. As many people have never heard about hiv, they do not know how to avoid it. There is …
Ivan Illich, defrocked Catholic itinerant priest who spent a lifetime unmasking the pernicious hold of institutions and professionals on our lives, passed away in Bremen, Germany, on December 2, 2002. He was 76. Perhaps the last of the great iconoclasts (Foucault, Bourdieu, Paul Goodman, Schumacher, among others) of his generation, …
conventional treatment of asthma is unable to cure the disease, as it pays little attention to eosinophils (white blood cells), whose levels in the lungs have been observed to rise weeks before an asthma attack. This was established during a study conducted by researchers from Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, the …
an informal round of World Trade Organisation (wto) talks was held in Sydney, Australia on November 14 and 15, 2002. A select group of 25 countries including Brazil, China, India, Senegal, the eu and the us attended the talks. The issue of developing countries' access to inexpensive medicines, enabling them …
participants: chris curtis, professor of medical entomology at the london school of tropical medicine & hygiene, london; nirbhay kumar, professor at school of hygiene and public health, john hopkins university, usa; rob ridley, coordinator of product research and development, world health organisation, geneva; p v venugopal, director (international operations) medicines …
The German ban on the import of Indian textiles containing azo-dyes, said to leech out carcinogenic amines, sent shockwaves through the Indian handloom industry. But this proved to be instrumental in the reinvension of India's ancient knowledge of eco-friendly natural dyes. Mudapathi Balakrishnan, a textile trader in Kannur, Kerala, was …
just 10 avoidable risk factors, including malnutrition, unsafe sex, smoking and poor sanitation, account for 40 per cent of global deaths each year. This was stated in the latest World Health Report of the World Health Organisation (who). According to the organisation, cheap remedies exist for many ailments and governments …
It is well established that exposure to dioxins can lead to reproductive problems and cancer. Now, a recent analysis has found a correlation between the harmful chemical and diabetes. Researchers from Ontario-based University of Guelph have analysed a variety of epidemiological studies and found that high levels of dioxins can …
Plants are available in far-away places; women can't collect them. So we don't teach them our medicines. Gania, Medak, Andhra Pradesh Our generation will have to learn cultivation techniques from experience. There is nothing to go by. Chaturbhuj, Dudu, Rajasthan Plants that were available near the house now have to …
The district health office at Doti in Nepal has embarked upon a novel community medicine programme. It will be launched in 21 village development committees (VDCs) of the area. The scheme is meant to enable smooth and adequate supply of medicines in health institutions. Moreover, these medicines would be available …
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (wssd) failed Thobeka Fani, 24, resident of Alexandra, a poor suburb just nine kilometres from Sandton, the upmarket venue of wssd. Some 21,000 delegates, including 104 heads of state and governments, gathered between August 26 to September 4 to bridge the gap between the …
Unwilling to commit to a concrete sum of money over a concrete period of time to fund sustainable development in the South, the us came up with the idea of partnerships (also called "Type ii agreements' in wssd jargon) during the preparatory process of the wssd. Several aspects of these …
whether the us is undermining the multilateral process by shifting emphasis on partnerships The us is against everybody in the world. Partnerships are not obligatory for governments to be accountable. They are an agreement between two people. They may announce it or they may not announce it. It has absolutely …
in the analysis of unced 10 years ago, Down To Earth reported that the conference failed to achieve much because of the lack of faith and trust between governments. No government was willing to give away anything
It took 9,000 delegates almost 225 hours of strategising, negotiating and arguing over the language to reach an agreement on the 150 clauses of the final Plan of Implementation. After the Bali preparatory meeting, the un proudly claimed that 75 per cent of the text had been agreed upon, and …
Brazil is going global with its highly potent anti-aids programme. It will share its know-how in combating the disease with other countries. That the nation has succeeded in cutting its aids-related deaths by half over the past eight years is a measure of the campaign's success. Recently, leaders from Portuguese-speaking …
exercises and air pollution are a bad combination for those suffering from heart diseases, according to the first study of its kind. Although many researchers have reported an association between pollution and damage to heart, the study is the first to analyse the strain on heart muscles resulting from an …
the first direct evidence of a link between exposure to environmental estrogens and low male fertility has been found by researchers from the London-based King's College. Environmental estrogens are chemicals found in the environment that mimic biological estrogen present in female sex hormones. The researchers investigated how three environmental estrogens …
