Health issues in India
Narendra Modi made tackling India’s sanitation woes a cornerstone of his 2014 election campaign. With the launch of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan after the BJP’s victory in the polls, it seemed as though the government was moving towards fulfilling its promises. Almost five years on, how has the Mission benefited India and to what extent […]
An incident at a temple in Karnataka has spotlighted one of India’s major public health issues when it comes to infectious disease: food poisoning. More than 130 worshippers at a temple in the Chamarajanagar district became sick after eating food offered during the service. Eleven people died and eight are in critical condition at the […]
On World Toilet Day, United Nations figures on open defecation and toilets across the world should ring alarm bells. Four billion people still lack access to basic sanitation facilities. Each day, nearly a thousand children are dying due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrhoeal diseases. What’s the situation in India? “Four years since Swachh Bharat’s […]
An outbreak of food poisoning in a Mumbai school has brought the dangers of the condition to the public’s attention. The incident involved sixteen private school children and a teacher in Sahyadri Vidya Mandir in suburban Bhandup. They were were admitted to hospital in Mulund and placed under observation for 24 hours. This is not […]
Stunting during childhood reduces earnings later in life, in bad news for the millions of Indian children who suffer from the condition. Stunting refers to when a child is not tall enough for their age. The condition is generally caused by malnutrition or repeated infections. Prevalence of the condition in India is high, affecting 38.4 […]
“It is dirty everywhere”, this is how Amish Das describes his home: Boragaon, a landfill site which sprawls across 94 acres of wetland in Guwahati City in northeastern Assam. Amish, whose story was recounted in a feature for The Independent last year, has lived in Boragaon his entire life. His living is made through scavenging, […]
Dalsukh, a sanitation worker, went down a manhole on June 12. He did not come back up again. Descending into the manhole to clean it was Dalsukh’s job. A sanitation worker in the Ahmedabad district of Gujarat, he was cleaning drains near the Riyaz Hotel in Jamalpur. According to DNA India, CCTV footage showed Dalsukh […]
Hyderabad has been declared open defecation free (ODF) by the Indian government. A Quality Council of India (QCI) inspectorate visited the city to check its sanitation facilities. This followed a series of efforts by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to boost access to sanitation in the Telangana state capital. The measures included the […]
India’s environmental performance is one of the worst in the world. On environmental health, it’s the worst. A global index places India 177th place in a list of 180 countries ranked on their environmental performance. Only the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh and Burundi place lower. The Economic Performance Index (EPI) measures rankings against […]
WaterAid claims 732 million Indians lack access to toilets. The government, however, dismisses the findings as ‘factually incorrect.’ Is basic sanitation lacking in India? The State of the World’s Toilets Report, 2017 says India has the most people in the world without access to ‘at least basic sanitation.’ The reports claims that 40 percent of […]
![By Muzi at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/www.healthissuesindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Hyderabad_Town_Hall.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 "Hyderabad free of open defecation, says Centre")
