The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Labels on food products to be made mandatory

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Tuesday, Jan 06, 2009
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Labels on food products to be made mandatory

Staff Reporter

Label will be made compulsory in two months: Minister
He urges new medical graduates to stay put in India

Bangalore: With junk food threatening to become the daily staple for the upper income urban child, a trend manifesting already in childhood obesity, hypertension and diabetes, the Central Government will soon mandate that all food products should have labels on their packaging listing both ingredients and nutrition content such as calories and fat.

All food products will compulsorily bear these labels “in a month or two”, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramadoss told presspersons on the sidelines of the 13th convocation of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) here on Monday.

The State Government must take the dangers of junk food seriously, the consumption of tobacco and alcohol, especially among children, he said. “For instance, the average age of initiation into alcohol is now just 13.5 years in India,” he said.

Quality control

In a move towards quality control of hospitals and laboratories in the country, the Clinical Establishments Act, which prescribes uniform standards for all hospitals regardless of their size, will be introduced in Parliament in the next session, Dr. Ramadoss said.

“All hospitals and laboratories will be registered and regulated and will have to adhere to national public health standards. This is regardless of whether they have one bed or 1,000 beds,” he said.

Dr. Ramadoss urged the new graduates at the convocation to “stay put in India” in view of the acute shortage of human resources in the healthcare sector, and especially in the areas of mental health and neuroscience. “There are approximately 3,300 psychiatrists for a billion-strong population in India. India needs you,” he said. Degrees were awarded to 106 students.

As much as 8 per cent of the population suffers from some form of mental health disorder, and 2.5 per cent from severe conditions, he said.

He added that many doctors who had gone abroad 30 years ago were now returning, “by the dozen every week” because of the opportunities that have opened up in India.

Derecognised colleges

Ramachandra Gowda, State Minister for Medical Education urged that the centre “recognise for a year” the medical colleges that have been derecognised — Ambedkar Medical College here and Kasturba Medical Colleges in Manipal —to ease the “heartache caused to students and parents”.

In his convocation address, P. Balaram, director of the Indian Institute of Science said that the borders between scientific disciplines were blurring and cross-disciplinary interactions were the key to progress.

“By separating medicine, engineering and the sciences, we are ill-positioned to produce a new generation of biomedical researchers who will be truly competitive with the best in the world,” he said.

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