About one-third of the world’s population — 2.4 billion people — will remain without access to improved sanitation in 2015, according to a joint WHO/Unicef report issued on Monday.

The report — Progress on sanitation and drinking-water 2013 update, warns that at the current rate of progress, the 2015 millennium development goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of the 1990 population without sanitation will be missed by 8 per cent, or half a billion people.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria said on Monday that strains of tuberculosis with resistance to multiple drugs could spread widely. The International health agencies also highlighted an annual need of at least US$ 1.6 billion in international funding for treatment and prevention of the disease.

The WHO said that if fully funded, by 2016 over 90% of TB patients estimated to have MDR-TB will be detected and provided treatment in seven high-MDR-TB burden countries including India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Ukraine and South Africa.

A vaccine to combat malaria could become a reality by 2014. While currently there are no licensed vaccines against malaria or any other human parasite, a research vaccine against P. falciparum, known as RTS,S/AS01, is at an advanced stage.

According to the WHO experts, the vaccine is currently being evaluated in a large clinical trial in 7 countries in Africa. However, the WHO recommendation for use will depend on the final results from the large clinical trial. “These final results are expected in late 2014, and a recommendation as to whether or not this vaccine should be added to existing malaria control tools is expected in 2015”.

India will soon have a scientific regulatory agency responsible for the safety of the nation’s domestically produced and imported foods, cosmetics, drugs, biologics, medical devices, and radiological products.

Proposed on the lines of Centre for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in USA and the Centre for Disease Control, the new agency to be set up under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) will be responsible for promoting and protecting public health by ensuring that nation’s food supply and cosmetics are safe and honestly labelled. Sources said that the “implementation of this project will be started after the final approval of the 12th plan by the National Development Council, which is expected shortly.”

In a bid to ensure that the drugs available in the country are safe for consumption, the Drug Controller-General of India (DCGI) has asked the state drug inspectors to get the samples of the drugs collected and get them tested for their quality at the drug testing laboratories.

The issue was taken up during a discussion on spurious, substandard, expired drugs in the Union health ministry early this month after which it was decided to get the drug samples collected and be tested for their safety. A letter to this effect has been sent out to the state drug inspectors. DCGI has asked the inspectors to draw samples of drugs from the manufacturing sites and sent them to the Central Drug Testing Laboratories for prompt testing. DCGI has instructed to complete the “special drive” within a period of six-nine months.

India ranks shamefully low in a new report that put countries according to how successfully they managed to introduce pictorial health warnings on tobacco packets — a proven strategy that deters people from smoking or chewing tobacco.

According to the Cigarette Package Health Warnings: International Status Report, which was released at the fifth session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Seoul, South Korea, India ranked 123 among 198 countries surveyed on warning size and fulfilment of requirements for picture-based warnings on cigarette packets.

There is a bad news: India may not be able to meet Millennium Development Goals for Women and Children’s health by the target year of 2015.

India’s lessons that finally led to eradicating crippling polio reached Nigeria after it sought India’s expertise recently in combating the virus.

While India was taken off polio endemic list this year after it did not report any polio case, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan have remained to be few countries that are still endemic. Earlier, experts from India had visited Pakistan after Shahnaz Wazir Ali, the Pakistani Prime Minister’s national focal person on polio eradication led a nine-member delegation to India and asked for India’s help.

With a number states deciding to ban use and sale of gutka, the Union health ministry has urged the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government to follow its counterparts in rest of the country in banning sale of such products in the state.

So far, states of Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Delhi have implemented the provision as envisaged under Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) regulation and enforced enforce ban on manufacture, sale and storage of gutka and pan masala containing tobacco and nicotine in their states. Chandigarh also followed the suit and banned the sale, manufacture and storage of gutka.

With non-communicable diseases (NCDs) expected to rise in years to come, the Planning Commission, in its proposed health chapter for the 12th Plan, has recommended a package of policy interventions for the escalating threat of NCDs like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases which will emerge as major killers.

The experts have proposed interventions like raising taxes on tobacco, salt reduction in processed foods, early detection and effective control of high blood pressure, diabetes, screening for common and treatable cancers etc.