The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 21 April 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 20 April 2023

• At the One World TB Summit in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on March 24, 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi instilled fresh energy to the global tuberculosis (TB) elimination response and reiterated India’s commitment to spearhead this effort.
• India’s National TB Elimination Programme, or the NTEP (previously known as the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme, or RNTCP), has introduced several measures to find, notify and treat TB cases, with case notifications rising from 15.6 lakh in 2014 to over 24 lakh in 2022. This reflects the programme’s expanded reach and improved detection measures.
• We do have the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine for TB, but it does not adequately protect adolescents and adults who are at the highest risk for developing and spreading TB. While COVID-19 vaccines were developed within a year, we must prioritise and pick up the pace to find an effective TB vaccine. There are currently over 15 TB vaccine candidates in the pipeline; we must ensure that their clinical trials are prioritised to assess their efficacy in various community settings and for different target groups.

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• One World TB Summit is organised by the Ministry of Health to take forward the Indian vision of ‘One Earth, One Health’ .
• To achieve the goal of elimination Of TB by 2025 the PM announced TB-Mukt Panchayat, and shorter TB Preventive Treatment (TPT).
• India also became the first country to build a functional mathematical model to estimate TB. The mathematical model was presented before the delegates from 40 countries taking part in the 36th Stop TB Partnership Board.
• TB is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In humans, TB most commonly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB), but it can also affect other organs (extra-pulmonary TB).
• TB is spread from person to person through the air. Its common symptoms are cough with sputum and blood at times, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats.
• Most people who develop the disease are adults.
• In 2021, men accounted for 56.5% of the TB burden, adult women (32.5%) and children (11%).
• World Tuberculosis (TB) Day is observed on 24th March to spread awareness about the disastrous health, social, and economic consequences of TB and to take efforts to end the TB epidemic globally.
• Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana provides monetary support through direct benefit transfer to the patients.
• National TB Elimination Programme to meet the goal of ending the TB epidemic by 2025 the country, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030
• Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan: It’s an initiative of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) to accelerate the country’s progress towards TB elimination by 2025.it provides additional patient support to improve treatment outcomes of TB patients.
• TB Mukt Gram Panchayat Abhiyaan: TB Mukt Gram Panchayat campaign aims to involve the community to realise the goal of TB elimination.it provides for TB Champions who have been identified and sensitised on TB at the Panchayat level .
• Inclusion of Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine in the Indradhanush program.

• The latest State of World Population Report, an authoritative analysis by the UN, has officially stamped what has been known for a while: that India will become the most populous country in mid-2023, surpassing China’s 142.5 crore by about 3 million.
• This relative prosperity, though unable to solve India’s crisis of economic inequality, has, however, busted the myth of forced sterilisation and legal limits on family sizes being key to population control.
• Despite overtaking China, India’s population growth is slowing. The National Family Health Survey reported in 2021 that the total fertility rate had, for the first time, dipped to below the replacement level of 2.1.

• According to the World Health Organization, 36% of the world’s and 65% of Southeast Asia’s rabies deaths happen in India. The National Rabies Control Programme has recorded 6,644 clinically suspected cases and deaths of human rabies in 2012-22.
• On April 18, the government announced the notification of its Animal Birth Control Rules 2023, which are likely to become as much a bone of contention as the earlier Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules 2001, were. They purportedly respond to three stimuli: strays cannot be relocated, as the Supreme Court of India has held; must not face cruelty; and must be cared for.

• The Indian Air Force (IAF) will be participating in Exercise INIOCHOS-23, a multi-national air exercise hosted by the Greece Air Force from April 24 to May 4. This will be the third exercise that the IAF will be taking part simultaneously.
• The Exercise Cope India with the U.S. is under way at Kalaikunda and four Rafale fighters are taking part in multilateral exercise Orion hosted by France.
• The exercise will be conducted at the Andravida Air Base in Greece and the IAF will be participating with four Su-30 MKI and two C-17 aircraft.

• The Health Ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, has asked States and Union Territories to develop 100 food streets in 100 districts across the country. The aim of this project is to encourage safe and healthy practices to reduce food-borne illnesses and improve overall health outcomes, the Health Ministry said.
• In a letter to States, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Manoj Joshi said that easy access to safe and hygienic food is vital for the good health of citizens.
• The communication further said that safe food practices would not only boost the “eat right campaign” and food safety but also improve the hygiene credibility of local food businesses.
• Financial assistance of ₹1 crore per food street/district will be given to States and Union Territories.
• The project envisages 100 such food streets in 100 districts across the country.

• Pakistan on Thursday announced that Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would travel to India in May to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting, a development that could provide an opportunity to break the ice between the two neighbours.
• It would be the highest-level visit to India by any Pakistani leader in recent years and a possible opportunity to break the ice between the two nations.
• The ties between India and Pakistan came under severe strain after India’s warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)?

• SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization.
• It’s a Eurasian political, economic and military organization aiming to maintain peace, security and stability in the region.
• It was created in 2001.
• The SCO Charter was signed in 2002, and entered into force in 2003.
• Prior to the creation of SCO in 2001, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan were members of the Shanghai Five.
• Shanghai Five (1996) emerged from a series of border demarcation and demilitarization talks which the four former Soviet republics held with China to ensure stability along the borders.
• Following the accession of Uzbekistan to the organization in 2001, the Shanghai Five was renamed the SCO.
• India and Pakistan became members in 2017.

• Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, exploded during its first flight on Thursday, but Elon Musk congratulated his SpaceX team on an “exciting” test of the spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the moon, Mars and beyond.
• NASA has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 — a mission known as Artemis III — for the first time since the Apollo programme ended in 1972. NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX, saying “every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward.”
• Starship consists of a 164-foot-tall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop a 230-foot tall first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket.

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