India fares poorly among middle-income countries when it comes to overall well-being of children even as the world witnessed significant progress in child health, education and nutrition during the last decade.

India has slipped by 12 ranks since 1995 and is placed 112th in the global "Child Development Index" released by Save the Children, the world's leading independent NGO that works for child rights.

According to the report, which analysed child well-being on three basic parameters of health, education and nutrition since 1995, India's CDI fell by three ranks from 100 to 103 between 1995 and 1999, and by another nine ranks (103 to 112) between 2005 and 2010. Out of 141 countries covered by the report, India is among the 14 whose ranks have dropped, it said.

"It is a wake-up call for India. Save the Children has reiterated economic progress must result in inclusive growth for all, especially the poor and the marginalised," said Thomas Chandy, CEO, Save the Children, India.

The CDI, launched in 2008 as a tool to monitor the progress in child well-being, ranks the best and worst places for children and improvements in child well-being globally.

It measures the number of children in school, under five mortality rates and number of underweight children. The three indicators are aggregated by simply calculating the average score between them for each period under review, meaning that each of them has equal weighting in the index scores.

According to the report, Japan is at present the best place in the world for a child, followed by Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Switzerland, UK and Norway.

The US is ranked 24 in the Index, while Australia is at 16th place and China is at 29th. Somalia is at the bottom.

The report also found that conditions for children have improved in 90 per cent of countries since the second half of the 1990s. Compared to that time, a child is now a third more likely to go to school and a third less likely to die before their fifth birthday.

However in stark contrast, it shows that nutrition is seriously lagging behind and that the proportion of acutely malnourished children grew by 1.2 per cent during the 2000s.

In India, 42 per cent of children are underweight, while 58 per cent are stunted by the age of two years.

If you enjoy telling younger members of your family that food just isn't as wholesome as it used to be, you might need to make an exception.

Eggs are far more nutritious and beneficial for our health than they were 30 years ago, scientists claim.

Not only have they found that eggs are lower in fat, cholesterol and calories, but they also contain more vitamin D than previously thought.

A major study, funded by the Department of Health, found that the average medium-sized egg now has nearly 25 per cent less saturated fat which is linked to heart disease than one sold in the 1980s.

They contain 1.3 grams, rather than 1.7 grams. We are advised to eat no more than 20 grams of saturated fat a day.

The study also found they contain 177 micrograms of cholesterol, the substance which clogs arteries, just over 10 per cent less than the 202 micrograms previously recorded. They have fewer calories than experts originally thought, too there are 66 in a medium egg, not 78.

Furthermore, the scientists said eggs contain nearly twice the amount of vitamin D than was noted in the 1980s.

The vitamin is essential for protecting the bones and preventing rickets, a condition which causes bone deformities in young children.

But earlier this year the chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, warned that many of us are not getting enough of it. Cases of rickets have increased fivefold since 1997.

A medium egg contains 1.6 micrograms of vitamin D compared with the 0.9 micrograms that was recorded in the 1980s. This is two-thirds of our recommended daily amount.

Nutritionist Cath MacDonald said: 'This is a very welcome finding at a time when there is rapidly accumulating evidence that a lack of vitamin D could be a risk factor for a number of chronic diseases.'

Scientists from the Institute of Food Research believe eggs are healthier largely because the food given to hens has changed.

Since the 1980s they have been fed a mixture of wheat, corn, vegetable oil and high-protein formulated feed, rather than meat and bone-meal.

This means their eggs have less cholesterol and saturated fat. The new feed also helps them to absorb more vitamin D and other nutrients

Better technology also means scientists can now analyse the nutritional content of eggs more accurately. Previous measurements may have overestimated fat and cholesterol levels.

Women who use marijuana can more than double the risk of giving birth to a baby prematurely, a new study has revealed.

Preterm or premature birth - at least three weeks before a baby's due date - can result in serious and life-threatening health problems for the baby, and an increased risk of health problems in later life, such as heart disease and diabetes.

A large international study, of more than 3000 pregnant women in Adelaide, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand has detailed the most common risk factors for preterm birth.

The research team, led by Professor Gus Dekker from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute and the Lyell McEwin Hospital, found a number of risks for spontaneous preterm birth.

These risks include strong family history of low birth weight babies, use of marijuana prior to pregnancy, having a mother with a history of pre-eclampsia, having a history of vaginal bleeds and having a mother with diabetes type 1 or 2.

The team also found that the greatest risk factors involved in the preterm rupture of membranes leading to birth included mild hypertension not requiring treatment, family history of recurrent gestational diabetes, receiving some forms of hormonal fertility treatment and having a body mass index of less than 20.

"Our study has found that the risk factors for both forms of preterm birth vary greatly, with a wide variety of health conditions and histories impacting on preterm birth," Professor Dekker, who is the lead author of the study, said.

"Better understanding the risk factors involved in preterm birth moves us another step forward in potentially developing a test - genetic or otherwise - that will help us to predict with greater accuracy the risk of preterm birth. Our ultimate aim is to safeguard the lives of babies and their health in the longer term," he added.

Not moving enough may be as hazardous to your health as smoking, a new study shows.

The study, which is published in The Lancet, estimates as many as 5.3 million deaths around the world were caused by physical inactivity in 2008.

By comparison, researchers point out that cigarette smoking is estimated to cause about 5 million deaths worldwide each year.

"Physical inactivity has a large impact on the health of the world. In fact, its impact is comparable to that of cigarette smoking," says researcher I-Min Lee, ScD, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a news conference.

Experts who were not involved in the research questioned that claim, however.

Timothy Armstrong, PhD, coordinator of the surveillance and population-based prevention program for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, points out that his organization estimates that inactivity causes fewer deaths -- about 3.2 million deaths around the world each year.

Armstrong says he thinks the Lancet researchers compared numbers that were arrived at in two different ways. "If the same methodology had been applied to smoking, I suspect we would not see the similar estimates for mortality," Armstrong says in an email to WebMD.

"That is not to say that physical activity or physical inactivity is not a major risk factor" for chronic diseases, he says. "It is. WHO currently ranks it fourth after high blood pressure, tobacco use, and high cholesterol."

The study further estimates that 6% of heart disease, 7% of type 2 diabetes, and about 10% of colon and breast cancers, are linked to lack of activity.
Sitting a Lot Can Be 'Very Bad' for You

Experts who study the health effects of physical inactivity praised the study for its broad scope and careful methods.

"This is a super, super analysis," says James Levine, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "We know that as soon as somebody gets out of their chair, their blood sugar improves, their blood cholesterol and triglycerides improve, and that's very consistent. Every time you get up it gets better. Every time you sit down it gets worse."

"If you add up the fact that you sit a lot, many, many hours each day, the cumulative impact of a lot of sitting is not surprisingly therefore very bad," Levine says.

Other experts agree.

"Inactivity plays a role in almost every chronic disease there is," says John P. Thyfault, PhD, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri's School of Medicine. He studies the health effects of inactivity but was not involved in the research.

"We should maintain cigarette smoking as public health enemy number one, but we should move physical inactivity right up next to it," he says.

Snoring heavily almost doubles the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, a study shows.

Researchers in Taiwan found patients diagnosed with the snoring-related condition sleep apnoea were nearly twice as likely to suffer the joint-damaging disease, Daily Mail reported Thursday.


Scientists believe chronic sleep apnoea can lead to inflammation in blood vessels in the body, which may act as a catalyst for arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis was previously thought to be triggered when something goes wrong with the immune system.

In Britain, three million people suffer from sleep apnoea, though many more may remain undiagnosed.