Delhi has joined several Indian states in banning glue pads for rodent control (GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- The Delhi government announced directives to ban the manufacture, sale and use of glue pads that are common but one of the most cruel methods to kill rodents.
- It joined states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and some others where the method is already banned following an advisory of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) in 2011.
Glue pads:
- The products use strong glue that traps small animals running over it. These animals are unable to free themselves, attempt to chew off body parts that are stuck and die slowly due to starvation and extreme pain.
- Apart from pests like rats, mice and some insects, other small animals like squirrels and frogs also accidentally get stuck in these glue pads and die, noted the order by the director of the state’s animal husbandry unit.
Issues:
- But, as with the unfolding debate on human-wildlife conflict in the country, it has raised some questions.
- A small section of the healthcare and hospitality industries, for instance, has complained that glue traps are more effective than alternatives like rat poison, traps and cages, at least for their purpose.
- The ban has disrupted their operations and made maintaining hygiene a challenge in hospitals, restaurants and hotels, they complained.
- In AIIMS Bhopal, for instance, the glue strips were used to protect dead bodies in the mortuary from rats.
Rat poison:
- Rat poison, a commonly used alternative to glue pads, is also one of the most inhuman ways of dealing with rodent infestation. The ban on glue pads serve as a reminder that poisoning rats threatens predators who feed on their carcass but isn’t regulated.
- Rat poison, along with glue strips, was observed to be the worst for ‘rat welfare’ in a January 2023 Oxford University study.
- Anticoagulant poisons, which interfere with blood clotting and kill rats through haemorrhaging, can lead to extreme suffering.
- Animals that feed on rats; cats, snakes, mongoose and predatory birds like hawks and owls are also harmed by the toxins.
SGAR:
- Second-generation AR (SGAR) can be lethal for raptors in high doses, studies have shown. But they can also accumulate in the livers of animals and remain in the foodchain for months, thus contaminating the ecosystem.
- It is difficult to ascertain the actual number of birds of prey that die of secondary poisoning due to AR but a 2020 study found that all the red-tail hawks in their sample size "tested positive for exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides".
- Certain SGARs are banned in the US, British Columbia in Canada and partially in the United Kingdom (effective from July 2024).
Suicide by humans:
- Moreover, this class of rodenticides are also toxic for humans. Poisoning is second-most common means adopted by people dying of suicide. In India, some 29,408 people died of suicide by consuming poison in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
- The problem is so prevalent in Tamil Nadu, where 7,041 people died consuming poison the same year, that the government ordered a blanket ban on rodenticides.
Loss to farmers:
- At the same time, the damage caused by rats, especially in an agrarian country like India, cannot be overlooked.
- In 2022, more than 100 farmers in Mizoram reported that hundreds of thousands of rats ate away 524 hectares of their paddy fields from August-September. They resorted to dealing with the menace by mass poisoning of the rats, with support from the state government.
- The Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha was infested by an unusually large number of rats following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, posing a threat to its wooden idols and structures.
- But poisoning wasn’t an option for the authorities not only because of religious reasons but also to protect the other wildlife like monkeys and pigeons found on the premises.
Way Forward:
- Experts feel there is a need to check the indiscriminate use of rat poison in India. More humane and safer methods may be time-consuming but have been successfully adopted to control rat populations.
WHO releases first-of-its-kind patient safety rights Charter
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Why in news?
- The World Health Organization (WHO) released the first-ever patient safety rights charter outlining the core rights of all patients in the context of safety of health care recently.
- The charter also sought to assist governments and other stakeholders to ensure the voices of patients are heard and their right to safe health care is protected.
Patient safety:
- Patient safety is the avoidance of unintended or unexpected harm to people during the provision of health care.
- Around 1 in every 10 patients is harmed in health care and more than 3 million deaths occur annually due to unsafe care, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
- In low-to-middle income countries, as many as 4 in 100 people die from unsafe care.
Patient harm:
- Some of the most common sources of patient harm are medication errors, surgical errors, health care-associated infections, sepsis, diagnostic errors and patient falls.
- There are several factors leading to patient harm: System and organisational factors; technological factors; human factors and behaviour; patient-related factors and others.
- According to the WHO, there are multiple and interrelated factors that can lead to patient harm and more than one factor is usually involved in any single patient safety incident.
New resources:
- The WHO unveiled two new resources at the conference for patient safety; a storytelling toolkit to guide patients and families in sharing their experience related to harmful events within health care and Global Knowledge Sharing Platform that will support the exchange of global resources, best practices, tools and resources related to patient safety.
- The upcoming World Patient Safety Day on September 17, 2023, aims to emphasise the crucial role of listening to patients, families and caregivers.
Concerns:
- A 2023 survey of WHO Member States on the implementation of the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030 showed the poor state of its execution. The action plan was released August 2021.
- Interim results of the survey showed only 13 per cent of responding countries have a patient representative on the governing board or an equivalent mechanism in the majority of their hospitals.
- Income-based implementation gap was also pointed out by the survey as good practices were largely concentrated in higher-income countries.
Way Forward:
- According to the OECD, investing in patient safety positively impacts health outcomes, reduces costs related to patient harm, improves system efficiency, and helps in reassuring communities and restoring their trust in health care systems.
Chandrayaan-1 data suggests electrons from Earth forming water on Moon
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Why in news?
- Scientists analysing the remote sensing data from India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission have found that high energy electrons from the Earth may be forming water on the Moon.
- The team led by researchers from the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Manoa in the US discovered that these electrons in Earth's plasma sheet are contributing to weathering processes, breaking down or dissolving of rocks and minerals on the Moon's surface.
Why it matters?
- Knowing the concentrations and distributions of water on the Moon is critical to understanding its formation and evolution, and to providing water resources for future human exploration.
- The new finding may also help explain the origin of the water ice previously discovered in the permanently shaded regions of the Moon.
Basis of study:
- They analysed the remote sensing data that were collected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument, an imaging spectrometer, onboard India's Chandrayaan 1 mission between 2008 and 2009.
- They, specifically, assessed the changes in water formation as the Moon traversed through Earth's magnetotail, which includes the plasma sheet.
Key Highlights:
- Solar wind, which is composed of high energy particles such as protons, bombards the lunar surface and is thought to be one of the primary ways in which water has been formed on the Moon.
- The team investigated the changes in surface weathering as the Moon passes through Earth's magnetotail, an area that almost completely shields the lunar body from solar wind but not the Sun's light photons.
- This indicates that, in the magnetotail, there may be additional formation processes or new sources of water not directly associated with the implantation of solar wind protons. In particular, radiation by high energy electrons exhibits similar effects as the solar wind protons.
- This finding and the team's previous study of rusty lunar poles indicate that the Earth is strongly tied with its Moon in many unrecognised aspects.
Facts:
- Chandrayaan 1 was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in October 2008, and operated until August 2009. The mission included an orbiter and an impactor.
- India successfully landed Chandrayaan-3 mission, with a rover and a lander, near the Moon's enigmatic south pole last month, becoming the first country to do so.
