On the backdrop of India-EU and India-UK Trade Agreement, the India and Europe Sustainability Conclave, was held from 28 February to 01 March, 2023.  

The Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles , Dr. Piyush Goyal addressed issues of climate change. He added that climate crisis as a result of high level consumption and waste generation could be combated by sharing a global responsibility. 

Heading towards sustainability both low and middle income countries can make their contribution to mitigating the climate crisis, setting their own goals. 

India is among the top 5 performers meeting the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as a part of the Paris Agreement.

Read the full report @UNFCC website - Click Here

Monitoring of child development during the first 1000 days (from conception to age 24 months) is important to track progress toward global and national policy goals for children and provides a critical reference to plan and evaluate services to support healthy development.

The Global Scales for Early Development (GSED), which is introduced by the WHO in February 2023, is intended to offer a standardized method for measuring the development of children up to 36 months of age at the population and programmatic level globally.

The GSED consists of two measures for population and programmatic evaluation

The GSED also includes measures that are being tested (and can be made available on demand):

One overall score of development, the Developmental score (D-score) can be calculated from GSED SF, LF & HF; which is intended to reflect children’s holistic development across multiple domains typically captured in this age group.

WHO - World Health Statistics Report 2022, while discussing the burden of healthcare focuses on the availability of the healthcare workforce globally noting that Africa, which bears almost one quarter (24%) of the world’s disease burden, has only 3% of the world’s healthcare workers. 

The estimated density of medical doctors per 10,000 population during 2014–2020 was 37 in the European Region, but as low as 8 in the South-East Asia Region and 3 in the African Region. 

Cuba has the maximum density of medical doctors per 10,000 population (84.2) but the density of nursing and midwifery personnel is only 75.6 as opposed to Seychelles which has 229.5 nurses/midwives but only 22.5 doctors per 10,000 population.

India on the other hand has only 1.6 doctors and 8.7 nurses and midwives per 10,000 population.

The pandemic has exacerbated these disparities, as healthcare workers experienced physical and emotional exhaustion, stress, burnout, and even death.

eSanjeevani is the first-ever online OPD consultation service offered by the Government of India under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has said that in the time of COVID-19, the eSanjeevani app has proved to be a great boon for the people.

eSanjeevani OPD – Stay Home OPD has been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Mohali. 

Salient features of this citizen-friendly web-based National Teleconsultation Service are: 

At present, it has served more than 9 crore patients and is compliant with ABDM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) and SNOMED-CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms).

Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the attendance of workers is supposed to be entered through National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS). 

At each worksite, this is to be done by the MGNREGS mates or supervisors. 

As per the Ministry of Rural Development statistics, Only 1,58,390 of 2,69,637 Gram Panchayats have reported NMMS usage. 41% of gram panchayats did not use the app. 

Around 26% of the registered supervisors have used the app to record their attendance. The disadvantage of the NMMS is the cost of mobile phone and Internet bills are to be borne by the supervisors themselves. 

Nearly 10% of the worksites are exempted in areas of low connectivity like hilly or remote areas.

Chandigarh will soon have imaging and diagnostic facilities at sub-divisional hospitals under public-private partnerships. 

The government of Haryana announced Comprehensive Health Insurance of Antyodaya Units (CHIRAYU) - Ayushman Bharat in 2023- 2024, benefiting:- 

Centre of Excellence is proposed to be established at the Post Graduate Institute of Dental Science (PGIDS), Rohtak, Shaheed Hasan Khan Mewati Government Medical College, Nalhar (Nuh)

The Department of Community Medicine will be upgraded to function as the center of excellence in Preventive Health by focusing on research and providing technical inputs for health screening to the NIROGI scheme. The budget estimated for the above proposals is 20% more than the 2022-2023 estimate.

Tb Vaccine Accelerator facilitates licensing and use of effective novel TB vaccines and establishes alignment between funders, global agencies, governments, and end users. 

BCG is the only licensed vaccine that provides moderate efficacy in preventing severe forms of TB in infants and young children but does not adequately protect adolescents and adults (responsible for 90% of global transmissions) 

A 75% effective vaccine could avert up to 110 million new cases and 12.3 million deaths as per a WHO-commissioned study. 

Despite the WHO End TB strategy, and commitments to end TB by 2030, globally, around 10.6 million people contracted TB and 1.6 million died in 2021.