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Health

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Jobs lost, middle-class Indians line up for rations and ‘worry about meals’

As India’s economy shrunk by 7.3 per cent last year, the daily average wage for about 230 million Indians — enough to make the world’s fifth-largest nation — dropped below the Rs 375 ($5) threshold, according to a study by the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. “An alarming 90 per cent of respondents” reported “that their households had suffered a reduction in food intake as a result of the lockdown,” the study said.

The number of people living in households with daily incomes below $5 level spiked from 298.6 million, at the start of the outbreak in March 2020 to 529 million at the end of October, the study said.

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Will take action if digital crowd funding platform for rare diseases not made operational:HC

The court was hearing a batch of petitions on behalf of children suffering from rare diseases, including Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Mucopolysaccharidosis II or MPS II (Hunter Syndrome), and seeking direction to the Centre to provide them uninterrupted and free of cost treatment as the therapy is very expensive.

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Global insurance premium may rise by 3.3% to $6.9 trillion in 2021 : Swiss Re

Said Jerome Haegeli, Group Chief Economist at Swiss Re Institute,”We expect the insurance industry to earn a record $ 7 trillion in premium by end of next year. The economic upswing expected in 2021 and 2022 is on track to materialise, and this is a key factor for insurance premium growth across the globe. The main market to watch is China, where both economic and premium growth continue at a strong pace. Consumer awareness is clearly an important growth driver and this has been driven by the pandemic. Whether it is private medical insurance or supply chain interruption for businesses, people have become much more aware of what insurance is, and how it can help them to emerge resilient from such a crisis

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Hospitals’ revenue likely to grow 20-22% in FY2022: ICRA

“Overall, ICRA expects at least 200 bps improvement in profitability in FY2022, though the margins are expected to moderate from the level seen in Q4 FY2021 due to normalisation of some of the cost-cutting measures and higher proportion of Covid-19 treatment. Further, the restrictions on treatment charges for Covid-19 patients in certain states could keep the margins in check,” ICRA Assistant Vice President & Sector Head, Mythri Macherla, said in a statement.

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Misinformation spikes Google searches on infertility, Covid jabs

“Misinformation is a significant threat to healthcare today and a main driver of vaccine hesitancy,” said Nicholas Sajjadi, osteopathic medical student at Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The inaccurately represented information spread rapidly on social media channels, potentially influencing public perception and decision-making among pregnant patients or those seeking to become pregnant, according to research published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine.

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