Morning Briefing

"In many parts of India, teenagers and housewives are now donning the garb of health volunteers and convincing pregnant women to deliver in hospitals, and not at homes," the Times of India reports, and profiles Lata Ravikar, "one of the many ordinary women who are leading a silent revolution in urban slums and villages across the country." The news service writes, "The invisible hand of these women" -- called didis -- "has already improved maternal and child health indicators, according to a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded initiative that has tracked their impact in two states," noting, "In Maharashtra, for instance, the proportion of hospital deliveries has gone up from 78 percent to 88 percent in four years in the communities where these workers have been active."