14 June 2024, The Hindu
Gig workers brave extreme heat with no help from employers
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GS 3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilisation of resources, growth, development and employment
- Pawan Kumar, a gig worker, has been running a chock-a-block schedule since the onset of harsh summer.
- The 25-year-old fixes air conditioners for an online platform, from where he gets over 10 assignments a day.
- Battling the heatwave, he rides his rented bike to various locations across the city, climbs stairs with his heavy equipment bag, sometimes without even being offered a glass of water by his clients.
The NEET sheeters
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
- On May 5, after a tense 3.2 hours of answering 180 questions, 18-year-old Jind resident Shubham Lohan, expected a near perfect score of 705/720, in what would be his second attempt at the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) that qualifies students to study medicine.
- Lohan says he attempted the test again this year because he hoped to improve his score for an MBBS in one of the 20 premier All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) that offer nearly 2,000 seats.
- He quickly calculated his possible score based on the answer key provided by his coaching class. The test is multiple-choice-based, and scores are calculated through a computerised system based on Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) technology.
Singular focus
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GS 3: Science and Technology- Recent developments and their applications and effects in everyday life
- The portfolios of many of the newly sworn-in Ministers of the 18th Lok Sabha signal no significant changes from what they held in the previous regime.
- The Bharatiya Janata Party continues to retain the ‘major’ portfolios, from Home to Telecommunications, with the rest distributed among its coalition allies.
- The 18th Lok Sabha also includes five Ministers of State with independent charge.
- One of them is Jitendra Singh, whose portfolio spans the Departments of Space (DoS) and Atomic Energy (DAE), the Ministries of Earth Sciences (MoES), Science and Technology (MST), and Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. Each of these ministries or departments by itself is a handful these days.
- The DoS is grappling with the entry of private sector players in the national space programme as well as managing the development of the maiden human spaceflight mission and new launch vehicles.
- The MoES is involved in missions to explore the seabed for mineral resources — an enterprise just beginning to feature in multilateral fora — as well as climate adaptation and mitigation.
Do coalition governments slow down the economic reforms agenda?
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GS 3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilisation of resources, growth, development and employment
Vaishnaw directs Railways to prevent unauthorised travel
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GS 3: Indian Economy - Infrastructure – Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.
- Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has expressed serious concern over the trend of unauthorised persons travelling in reserved coaches.
- According to railway sources, Mr. Vaishnaw held a video conference with the General Managers of all Zonal Railways on June 13 and pointed to the surge in the number of complaints received in the ‘RailMadad’ application about unreserved passengers travelling in reserved coaches and called for effective measures to curb the same.
GST Council to meet for the first time this year on June 22
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GS 2: Appointment to various Constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various Constitutional Bodies
- The Centre has decided to convene a meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on June 22, eight-and-a-half months after its last meeting, the Finance Ministry said on June 13, 2024.
- “The 53rd meeting of the GST Council will be held on 22nd June, 2024 at New Delhi,” a ministry statement informed.
Rapid, diagnostic test for UTIs may help stem super bug crisis
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GS 3: General awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nanotechnology, bio-technology
- This week a prize was announced that is likely to have far-reaching implications in the world of health care.
- Despite its importance most of the community is unaware of the event.
- The winner of the Longitude prize is poised to spearhead a revolution in the field of infection management and global efforts to tackle antimicrobial resistance.
- The £8million ( ₹85 crore) Longitude Prize on Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), first announced in 2014, revealed its winner at an event in London’s Science Museum.
- The PA-100 AST System from Sysmex Astrego is a high-tech, transformative, rapid, point-of-care test for UTIs (Urinary Tract Infection).
- Rational use of antibiotics — choosing the appropriate antibiotic for the correct patient at the optimal time — is fundamental in saving lives and combating the superbug crisis.
- Rapid diagnostics are poised to be crucial in this effort.
- The winner of the Longitude Prize is set to spearhead the list of emerging rapid diagnostic technologies in a transformative manner.
- The applications for the Longitude Prize bring hope, suggesting that through collective action, we can look forward to a future protected from the threats of antimicrobial resistance.
A comprehensive immunisation schedule for women is ready
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
- The Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI) recently unveiled a comprehensive immunisation schedule for women that provides a list of essential vaccines that adult women should receive, and the recommended frequency of each vaccine.
- Actor and women’s health champion Kajal Aggarwal unveiled the immunisation schedule at an event in Mumbai recently.
- The importance of immunisation and vaccine preventable diseases in women cannot be overstated.
- A recent report highlighted that women spend 25% more time in poor health compared to men.
- Vaccination can help change this and safeguard women from vaccine-preventable diseases, contributing to an improved quality of life.
- The report, jointly written by the World Economic Forum and consultant McKinsey, ‘Closing the Women’s Health Gap: A $1 Trillion Opportunity to Improve Lives and Economies’, showcases how the narrowing of the women’s health gap would allow 3.9 billion women to live healthier, higher-quality lives.
India-made TB diagnostics tech wins acclaim at World Health Assembly
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GS 3: Achievements of Indians in science & technology.Indigenisation of technology and developing new technology
- The Truenat platform, a rapid molecular test for the diagnosis of pulmonary, extrapulmonary, and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis, that was developed in India, has been hailed for its role in combating TB and as a possible component of global healthcare solutions at the recently-held 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva.
- Developed by Goa-based Molbio, a point-of-care molecular diagnostics company, Truenat was first launched in 2017 and is a real-time quantitative micro-PCR system.
- It is a portable, battery-operated machine that can be deployed at labs, health centres, and in the field.
- Truenat delivers results from samples in less than an hour and can test for over 40 diseases.
