Welcome to My Blog

Here is a masonry blog layout with no sidebar

3 yrs of service and prosperity: Mandaviya on 3rd anniversary of Ayushman Bharat PMJAY

Since the inception of the scheme, more than two crore treatments worth Rs 26,400 crores have been authorised through a network of over 24,000 empanelled hospitals, both government and private across the country. Moreover, there are 918 Health Benefits Packages (HBP) covering 1,669 procedures along with COVID-19 treatment and diagnostic tests under the scheme. The top tertiary care includes orthopaedics, cardiology, cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, radiation oncology and urology.

New WHO air-quality guidelines aim to cut deaths linked to fossil fuels

The guidelines could also send a message to the wider public about lifestyle and business choices –- whether it’s driving cars and trucks, disposing of garbage, working in industrial jobs or farming.
Air pollution has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and early death, and recent evidence has suggested negative effects on pregnancy, cognitive development in kids, and mental health, experts say.

“There is nothing more essential for life than air quality,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. “And yet, because of air pollution, the simple act of breathing contributes to 7 million deaths a year. Almost everyone around the world is exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution.Air pollution is now comparable to other global health risks like unhealthy diets and smoking tobacco, WHO said.

Union Health Ministry releases guide on long-term health issues of COVID-19 infection

Speaking on the occasion, Union Minister of State of Health Ministry, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar emphasized the need to tackle mental health issues and to reach the last mile.

“This pandemic has put an unprecedented challenge on our Health and Health Care System. Mental Health Care is a big challenge for a country with such a large population. We need to build our capacity to tackle this challenge of mental health,” she said.

Boeing lifts China jet demand estimate over two decades to $1.47 trln

Chinese airlines will need 8,700 new airplanes through 2040, 1.2% higher than its previous prediction of 8,600 planes made last year. Those would be worth $1.47 trillion based on list prices, the U.S. planemaker said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Boeing revised up long-term forecasts for global airplane demand on the back of a strong recovery in commercial air travel in domestic markets like the United States.

COVID-fuelled child labour crisis spurs call for global social protection fund

The pandemic has pushed many countries – from the United States to Rwanda – to spend trillions of dollars on short-term measures, including payments to businesses and poor families, to cushion their populations from economic shocks. A fraction of this cash could be used to start a fund offering basic income like cash transfers to the poor, pensions for the elderly and disability, unemployment and child benefits, campaigners said at an online event.”Social protection is absolutely fundamental,” said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation. “If we have a fund to build those social protection systems for the 55% of the world’s people who have no social protection, and for the 72% who have little or no social protection, then it returns money and jobs to the economy,” she said.

Vaccine certification for travel must meet ‘minimum criteria’, says UK

Travelers who are not fully vaccinated, or vaccinated in a country such as India currently not on the UK government’s recognized list, must take a pre-departure test, pay for day two and day eight PCR tests after arrival in England, and self-isolate for 10 days, with an option to “test to release” after five days following a negative PCR test.

EU plans 120 billion euro economic boost by easing insurance rules

Olav Jones, deputy director general for Insurance Europe, an industry body, said he welcomed EU acknowledgement of the need to reduce capital requirements, but only a “significant and permanent” cut in capital would allow insurers to increase support for the economy and regain global competitiveness.

Brussels proposed easing the impact of the so-called volatility adjustment, which mitigates the impact of short-term market moves on insurer solvency.

It also wants to make it easier for insurers to benefit from preferential capital treatment worth around 10.5 billion euros from investing in long-term assets to green the economy.

‘We can end the pandemic’, UN chief says in new call for global vaccine plan

Although more than 5.7 million doses have been administered globally, 73 per cent have been in just 10 countries, and just three per cent of people in Africa have had innoculations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s plan calls for at least doubling vaccine production to ensure 2.3 billion doses are equitably distributed through the vaccine solidarity initiative, COVAX.

The goal is to reach 40 per cent of people worldwide by the end of this year, and 70 per cent in the first half of 2022, per targets set by WHO.

Moderna chief executive sees pandemic over in a year

“If you look at the industry-wide expansion of production capacities over the past six months, enough doses should be available by the middle of next year so that everyone on this earth can be vaccinated. Boosters should also be possible to the extent required,” he told the newspaper in an interview.

Vaccinations would soon be available even for infants, he said.

No climate finance for hydropower: ‘Rivers for Climate’ declaration

Incentivising and expanding hydroelectric power construction would not only fail to prevent catastrophic climate change, but it would also worsen the climate crisis by exploding methane emissions and diverting scarce climate funds away from meaningful energy and water solutions in a world that is already grappling with severe impacts of climate change, the release said.

As workers age, robots take on more jobs: study

“Aging is a huge part of the story” in robot adoption, said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conducted the study with Pascual Restrepo of Boston University.

The research fits a longstanding trend of countries such as South Korea and Germany – which both have very rapidly aging workforces – also being among the world’s fastest adopters of robots, based on the number of robots per human worker they deploy.

Study probes how ejections from Sun’s corona influence space weather predictions

Space weather refers to the conditions in the solar wind and near-Earth space, which can adversely affect the performance of space-borne and ground-based technological systems.
An example of space weather events is the geomagnetic storm, a perturbation in the Earth’s magnetic field, which can last for a few hours to a few days. Understanding of how events in the solar atmosphere influence space weather is necessary for monitoring and maintaining our satellites.