Stories you must read over the weekend -Governance Now

Stories you must read over the weekend

We replug a list of five stories from our current issue that you must read over the weekend

GN Bureau | March 17, 2017

#Madhya Pradesh #medicines #WHO #malnutrition #nutrition #Satender Awana #Ramjas row #weekend stories #children #women

Weekend stories

The nutrition crisis continues to stare at us, despite the fact that India is the fastest growing large economy today. In running after GDP growth, the human development index has probably been given a short shrift. People like us, from the urban middle class, are apt to think of malnutrition as something about poverty and welfare state. According to experts, there are serious questions over policy initiatives required currently to secure nutritional improvement. Unlike the concern with the poor alone, this issue is seen as cutting across all classes of the population.

Read: For a more nutritious India

Madhya Pradesh tops the number of infant deaths. In Satna, the stunting rate is higher than the national average of 39 percent – according to the National Family Health Survey-IV (2015-16), 39.6 percent of children (under five) are underweight while 41.2 percent are stunted. Varsha Singh, a scientist, says, “People here suffer from endemic hunger. The food consumed by people here fails to fulfill the nutritional requirement of the body. Their food intake is low and as a result the body gets accustomed to having less food. The purpose is to somehow fill up the stomach without taking nutrients like essential iron, iodine, zinc and calcium.”

Read ground report: What’s bad is better than what’s at home

"In Mosul, my sister and I were taken to a hall where many Yazidi girls had been captured and taken. There, we were sold. A Saudi man bought me and my sister. We were taken to Raqqa in Syria. This Daesh fighter raped us for some days and then brought us to a place where he bought other Yazidi girls. Another Daesh fighter bought me at this place and I was separated from my sister," says Lamia Haji Bashar who was captured by the IS and after many failed attempts, escaped. She tells her story to Governance Now.

Read: “Don’t think you are safe from the IS in India”

Tobeka Daki, a single South African mother and health activist from the eastern Cape, died fighting breast cancer in November last year. Her oncologist had told Tobeka that she needed trastuzumab – a life-saving WHO essential medicine for the treatment of HER2+ breast cancer – in addition to undergoing chemotherapy. However, three years after her diagnosis, Tobeka died because she could not access the prohibitively expensive solution. Tobeka’s death snowballed into a passionate cry of health activists, patients and other stakeholders who launched the Tobeka Daki Campaign (TDC) on February 7 to enhance access for the suffering millions to unaffordable drugs and vaccines.

Read: The battle to access affordable medicines heats up

Satender Awana talks about Leftist organisations."Yeh to meetha zeher hai (They are a sweet poison),” he says. “They are responsible for giving rise to intellectual terrorism in the country. Look at their ideology. All communist countries have suffered from dictatorships. Have any of them benefited from it? They appease the minority and use caste to divide people. Why do they shout slogans like ‘Kashmir maange azaadi’? This is such a sensitive topic for us, and they expect that there will be no reaction to (slogans like) ‘Afzal Guru hum sharminda hain, tere kaatil zinda hain’.” Governance Now talks to Awana, a former DUSU president, who spearheaded the protest in Ramjas College.

Read: Awana ko gussa kyun aata hai?

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