by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
By Nivedita Singh,
New Delhi : The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which took power in Delhi four years ago with a promise to build 1,000 Mohalla (neighbourhood) Clinics in the national capital, has managed to provide only 189 of the widely-praised clinics, blaming the central government for the slow pace of execution.
The Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinic (AAMC) project — the opening of primary healthcare centres to ensure free doctor consultations, tests and medicines to people — was one of the flagship schemes of the AAP for which the initial deadline was December 2016. But it was extended to March 2017 and the government failed to meet that target as well.
The tussle between the central and the Delhi governments has been blamed the most by the AAP for the delay in the construction of the clinics as the government lacked the power to take decisions until July 4, 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that Delhi’s Lt Governor was bound by the “aid and advice” of the Delhi government, bringing powers back to the AAP government.
The AAP, which came to power in February 2015, had a plan to have a clinic each — with a doctor, a pharmacist, a clinic assistant/multitasking worker — in a radius of five kilometres over a population of 10,000-15,000.
“Mohalla Clinics have been conceptualised as a mechanism to provide quality primary health care services accessible within the communities in Delhi at their doorstep. In the past three years, 164 clinics could be established. In just five months, 25 more clinics were opened. We can, for sure, say that the court ruling has given momentum to the work,” an official told IANS on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the tender to build 300 additional clinics had been finalised after land was identified. “The construction work is going on in full swing.”
“Identification and finalisation of land have been a major issue (as the subject of land is not under the Delhi government). Acquiring land takes most of the time… The other agencies are not very keen in giving us the land for clinics. As soon as we identify and finalise the land, construction is initiated.”
The PWD is given six months to build the clinic while three months time is assigned to ensure electricity and water supply along with posting of the staff — a doctor, a pharmacist and a multi-tasker worker.
The setting up of clinics has been envisaged in the form of a Pre-Engineered Insulated Box Type Re-located Structure which are to be manufactured and installed through PWD.
The clinics, functional from 8.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. on all days except Sundays, provide services like basic medical care based on standard treatment protocols which include curative care for common illnesses like fever, diarrhoea, skin problems, respiratory problems, first aid for injuries and burns, dressing and management of minor wounds and referral services.
While medicines are provided free of cost to the patients as per the essential drug list, the lab investigations were carried out by the empanelled laboratories. Officials said a total of 214 tests can be done for free through the clinics.
Along with providing health-related information, education and awareness, the clinics also provide preventive services such as antenatal and postnatal care of pregnant women, assessment of nutritional status and counselling and a preventive and promotive component of National/State Health Programmes.
The Mohalla Clinic project has been widely praised, including by the late Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister and a former Director-General of World Health Organisation.
Another former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, along with Brundtland visited some clinics last year and were “deeply impressed” by it.
The Delhi government was providing health care services through primary, secondary and tertiary facilities out of which the primary care is delivered through dispensaries, secondary health care through multi-speciality hospitals and tertiary health care services through super-speciality hospitals.
After the AAP came to power, in order to fill the gaps in services, there has been a paradigm shift in reorganising health care services.
Now the Delhi government provides a four-tier health care delivery system, with Mohalla Clinics for primary health care, multi-speciality poly-clinics for secondary health care in the form of OPD consultation by specialist doctors including diagnostics, multi-speciality Hospitals for IPD care (earlier called secondary level hospital) and super-speciality hospitals (earlier called tertiary level hospital).
The health services also cater to people from neighbouring states.
The government is also planning school clinics, to be started on the lines of the Mohalla Clinic.
“The school clinics will be started in Delhi government schools with an aim to improve the health and nutrition of the students. Locations of 265 School Clinics have been finalised,” another officer said.
The government has also proposed 94 additional polyclinics, apart from 25 functional ones in the city. “These will act as a satellite centre for outdoor specialised medical treatment centres,” the official said.
(Nivedita Singh can be contacted at nivedita.singh@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews, News, Politics
Amartya Sen
New Delhi : Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen said the lack of attention on social sectors had taken a “quantum jump in the wrong direction” since the BJP came to power and that despite the visible prominence of backwardness in India, the political dispensation was diverting attention from the core issues.
“Things have gone pretty badly wrong. Even previously before this government, we did not do enough on education and health. But it has taken a quantum jump in the wrong direction since 2014,” Amartya Sen said on Saturday during a discussion on his new book “Bharat Aur Uske Virodhabhas” (India and its Contradictions), co-authored with economist Jean Dreze.
Pointing out the contradiction in India getting backward while also being the fastest growing economy in the world, the Nobel Laureate said: “Twenty years ago, of the six countries in this region, India was the second best after Sri Lanka. Now it is the second worst.”
“And because of Pakistan’s problems, Pakistan has managed to shield us from being the worst,” he said.
He added that while people should take pride in the things that India has, they must be critical of those things of which they have reason to be ashamed.
“Despite the easy prominence of backwardness in India… now if you try to draw attention to that, the way to deflect it is to say: now think about the great pride of India,” Sen said.
He said despite the enormous inequalities, it was possible to distract attention.
“A great writer who I admire, V.S. Naipaul, who wrote such a novel like ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, could also write that what happened after the 13th century was destruction of Hindu temples and Hindu civilisation, overlooking that this is also when new ideas were coming in.
“If you can distract V.S. Naipaul’s attention then you can distract the attention of most intelligent people,” the Nobel Laureate said.
“The result is that there has been deflection. When there has been this deflection, we have to do something anti-deflection,” he added.
Dreze, who co-authored the book, said while India, in the last few years, had got some success in its quest to become the fastest growing economy — “helped partly by slowdown in China’s growth and partly by some jugglery of numbers” — there is a significant difference between growth and development.
“While development is the goal, economic growth is the medium to achieve that goal. And it’s something to think about that despite 7 per cent GDP growth, the income of the rural labourer has remained the same and yet no one speaks about it,” he said.
He added that while economic growth can help in achieving development, it needs to be accompanied by public action.
“If we talk about health, India is way behind even Bangladesh despite being economically ahead of it. And that is because of lack of public action in India compared to Bangladesh.
“Similarly public action is crucial for education, nutrition, social security, ensuring equality, and environmental protection,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, News
New Delhi : Summers are the bearer of the sweet aroma of memories of vacations, lazy afternoons and mangoes. This fruit is loved by all young or old but lately it has been infamous for its sugar content and is considered as a cause of weight gain so can mangoes really make us fat?
Saumya Shatakshi, Senior Nutritionist, Healthians, suggests the pros of eating mangoes and what to keep in mind:
* Mango is not just pure indulgence but a powerhouse to various nutrients like it has vitamin A, iron, copper and potassium.
* Mango is an energy food and provides sugar rush to the body which helps boost the energy levels of the body and keeps you active throughout the day.
* It is a storehouse to Vitamin C that increases the immunity and it is also rich in dietary fibre content
* Eating too much of mangoes can be harmful for health so maintaining the portion control is the key
* A medium-sized mango has nearly 150 calories, eating anything beyond the permissible calorie limits results in weight gain. Hence, it is advised not to overeat.
* Eating mangoes after meals increases the overall calories intake.
* We should replace our mid-morning or evening snacks with mangoes. It helps one enjoy the king of fruits without worrying about piling calories.
* Avoid having mangoes at night. It is preferable to have it during the first half of the day.
-*-
Celebrity nutritionist and dietician Nmami Agarwal suggests:
* The number of calories that food carries tells you how much energy it provides. Excess calories are stored as fat, which is why over eating leads to weight gain.
* Mangoes are inversely high on sugar, which generally is an enemy. This is because it causes insulin spikes and falls, which can leave you hungry and cause you to overeat.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Economy, Large Enterprise, Markets, News, Technology
New Delhi : Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies are helping Apollo Hospitals predict and suggest preventive steps for cardian diseases with utmost accuracy, a top hospital executive said here on Wednesday.
Microsoft last month partnered with Apollo Hospitals to expand its healthcare AI offering.
“Apollo Hospitals recognised the potential of technologies like AI, ML and data analytics in providing high-quality preventive healthcare services very early,” Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, told reporters here.
“Our partnership with Microsoft bring us to the forefront of this remarkable metamorphosis that is allowing us to meet healthcare demand and maintain service excellence regardless of geography,” Reddy added.
The AI Network for Healthcare, previously known as Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE), is a part of Microsoft “Healthcare NexT” initiative aimed at accelerating healthcare innovation through AI and Cloud computing.
Nearly three million heart attacks happen in India every year and 30 million Indians suffer from coronary diseases.
Apollo Hospitals, with Microsoft’s AI Network for Healthcare, now has the capability of applying ML and AI to cardio-vascular health records to develop an Indian-specific heart risk score.
With the new heart risk score for India, Apollo Hospitals’ AI model helps gauge a patient’s risk for heart disease and provides rich insights to doctors on treatment plans and early diagnosis.
“The beauty of these solutions is that all the depersonalized personal health data that Apollo Hospitals is crunching comes from the Indian population,” Microsoft said in a blog post on Wednesday.
This means the model is two times more accurate than models with ‘borrowed’ data from other countries with different lifestyles, socio-economic, genetic and environmental factors.
Now, when a patient goes for a cardio health check, the doctor can build up a more accurate cardio-vascular health profile of the patient based on machine learning of all their previous patient data.
AI can then, in turn, predict future coronary ailments the patient might experience in the next 10 to 20 years based on these multiple factors.
“Secondly, the doctor can make a patient health plan that addresses these possibilities whether it be prescribing medicine or recommending specific lifestyle changes,” the post said.
“Why does an individual with an X genetic biological presentation have disease X but not Y? Why does someone with the same lifestyle not have the same problem? Computing capacity is enabling us to take this data and generate clinical insights,” explained Reddy.
With the power of the Cloud, doctors can share high resolution 3D imagery and consult partner doctors locally and abroad in real time, improving surgery pre-planning and success.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Markets, News, Social Entrepreneur, Technology
By Sirshendu Panth,
Kolkata : Setting up of a Groundwater Mission can help develop an action plan for tackling problems like arsenic and fluoride pollution, storage anomalies and the alarming dwindling of freshwater resources that plague the South Asian region, a new book edited and partly written by an IIT don and other experts contends.
The mission, on the lines of the Drinking Water Mission, could play a pivotal role in formulating and implementing an initial plan based on feedback received from key working groups on groundwater, says Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-Kgp) Associate Professor Abhijit Mukherjee, the editor of the soon-to-be-published “Groundwater of South Asia”.
“The working groups would be on aquifer mapping and delineation, recharge systems and well-use efficiencies, groundwater-power co-management, demand management of aquifers and on groundwater legislation,” suggests the book, partly authored by Mukherjee and his students, and partly by invited stalwarts across the globe who have worked in South Asia.
Attached to the Department of Geology & Geophysics in the institute’s School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Mukherjee has worked in different parts of South Asia, looking at groundwater issues for almost two decades.
The South Asian region, comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, is the world’s most populous and densely-populated region. It occupies approximately four per cent of the world’s land area but supports over 25 per cent of the global population.
Despite being drained by three of the world’s large river systems that discharge huge volumes of water, sediments and nutrients to the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, almost half the water that enters the South Asian hydrologic system is dissipated by poorly understood and quantified processes.
“The region faces acute shortages of drinking water and other usable water, as it is witnessing rapid rise in water demand and change in societal water-use pattern because of accelerated urbanisation and change in lifestyles,” Mukherjee told IANS in an e-mail.
“Although South Asia is home to some of the highest-yielding aquifers of the world, the distribution of usable groundwater in the region is not uniform and there is a growing concern about the availability of safe water in many areas like wide portions of the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus basins due to presence of natural contaminants.
“Of these, the presence of elevated concentrations of arsenic and fluoride has been widely observed,” says the book, dwelling at length on arsenic pollution in the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Meghna and Kabul basin and fluoride pollution in the Indus basin.
“The distribution of arsenic concentrations within the basin may seem to be extremely heterogeneous and even patchy due to the integrated effect of the geomorphology, geology, hydrostratigraphy, depth, lithology (study of the general physical characteristics of rocks), bio-geochemical environment and anthropogenic (relating to, or resulting from the influence of human beings on nature) influences. Among the anthropogenic factors contributing to arsenic contaminations are ground-water abstractions, land use patterns, fertilisers and sewage,” says the book, while calling the arsenic contamination of groundwater in the Bengal Basin “the largest mass poisoning in human history.”
The 799-page book, divided into 44 chapters and published by Springer, also refers to extensive pumping of groundwater in the region, leading to lowering of the water table and enhanced inflow of oxygen-rich surface waters which “perturbs the redox state of the aquifers and may mobilise arsenic”.
The authors studied the groundwater storage (GWS) anomaly in the Indian subcontinent by using a combination of satellite and global land surface model-based outputs between 2003 and 2014, and observed “rapid declination” of GWS in northern and eastern regions of the subcontinent.
Mukherjee warned that the water crises might further aggravate with the predicted climate change and melting of the high-altitude glaciers that feed the hydrological system of South Asia.
“However, the existing knowledge is extremely heterogeneous. While some regions of these countries provide most studied natural groundwater system of the world, there is barely any knowledge existing from other areas… Also, the extent and effect of other emerging and unidentified groundwater contaminants like nitrate, pesticides, radiogens, antibiotics etc. are yet to be accounted for,” Mukherjee said.
The book also contains preambles of some of the themes written by globally eminent groundwater researchers like Cliff Voss of the US Geolgoical Survey, Matt Rodell from NASA, Science Director of the British Geolgoical Survey Martin Smith, AUS scientist Alan Fryar and eminent water economist Tushaar Shah.
(Sirshendu Panth can be contacted at s.panth@ians.in )
—IANS
