by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Markets, News
Mumbai : Mixed global cues, weakness in the Indian currency and heavy selling in the healthcare and finance stocks dragged the key equity indices on Friday, with Sensex and Nifty ending flat with a positive bias.
BSE Healthcare index tanked 2 per cent, while telecom scrips also witnessed heavy selling pressure, losing over 3 per cent.
The BSE Sensex closed higher 12.53 points, or 0.03 per cent, after touching a high of 36,469.98 and a low of 36,218.33 points.
The benchmark index opened higher on Friday, at 36,417.58 points from its previous close of 36,374.08.
The broader Nifty50 also ended in the green, up by a meagre 4.80 points, or 0.04 per cent.
Stocks-wise, Sun Pharma ended up as the top loser on Sensex. The scrip price declined to Rs 390.50 apiece, losing Rs 36.65, or 8.58 per cent, from its previous close of Rs 427.15.
The pharmaceutical major had tanked over 12 per cent at one point after reports of a complaint by a whistleblower against the company.
Other major losers on Sensex were Bharti Airtel, which slipped over 6 per cent, followed by Larsen and Tubro, Axis Bank and Yes Bank, all of which closed lower in the range of 1 to 2 per cent.
In contrast, the top gainer among the 30 scrips on Sensex were Reliance Industries, which jumped over 4 per cent following its healthy quarterly results on Thursday.
In was followed by Kotak Mahindra, HCL Tech, ONGC and Asian Paints, all of which gained up to 1.50 per cent.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
(Credit: The Economic Times)
By Frank Islam,
India’s public healthcare system is sick. In late September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration launched Ayushman Bharat, meaning Long Life India, to address this illness.
This initiative, which has been described as the “world’s biggest healthcare programme” will insure more than 500 million Indian citizens who currently have no coverage. Will “Modicare”, as the programme has been labeled, cure what ails India’s public health care system?
The answer is maybe. That answer must be equivocal because of the enormity of India’s healthcare needs, concerns regarding the adequacy of funding to address those needs, and uncertainty regarding Modicare’s implementation.
Healthcare in India today is tale of two groups. The first group is the wealthy and upper middle-class who receive their healthcare primarily from private sector providers. Overall, that healthcare is of good quality and easily accessible but can be expensive.
The second group is the lower middle-class and the poor who receive their healthcare primarily from public sector providers. Overall, that healthcare is of poor quality, difficult to access and the money spent on it is insubstantial.
In 2015, India’s public expenditure on public healthcare was approximately one per cent of its GDP. This compares quite unfavorably to other countries who provide some form of universal healthcare coverage. For example, Singapore expended 2.2 per cent of its GDP, South Korea expended 4.2 per cent and the United States expended 8.5 per cent.
India’s small expenditures are reflected in its healthcare performance. Some of the deficiencies of the current system are:
* The per capita insurance expenditure on healthcare is one of the lowest in the world. Over 75 per cent of Indians have no health insurance.
* Because the states carry the primary burden for healthcare coverage, there is a significant difference in the scope and nature of that coverage across the country.
* There is a huge rural-urban disparity in terms of the quantity and quality of coverage.
* Compared to the rest of the world, India has an average number of doctors but they attend to only one third of the Indian population.
* The lack of adequate insurance coverage and availability of public sector health care causes Indians to have to cover more than 60 per cent of their expenses personally.
Ayushman Bharat is structured to address these conditions. It provides poor families insurance of up to $6,950 (nearly Rs 500,000) for hospitalisation, calls for the establishment of 150,000 health and wellness centres to provide primary care throughout India and emphasises holistic healthcare ideas such as yoga as part of this intervention.
The programme will expand the public health network far beyond the existing governmental hospitals. It will pay public and private sector facilities a fixed rate for covered services. To date, 15,000 hospitals have applied to be certified providers.
This appears to be a solid framework for launching this new initiative. The government has appropriated $1.5 billion for Modicare health insurance for 2018-19 and 2019-20. Of this, $300 million is allocated for the first year of the programme.
This seems like a lot of money. But, $1.5 billion divided by 500 million covered lives means this is only $3,000 per individual — a very modest amount.
The total allocation also seems insufficient when unknowns are considered: What percentage of the-newly insured will take advantage of their coverage in year one? Who provides payment when an insured individual or family exceeds it coverage? To what extent will private sector providers deliver their services at fixed rates to public sector patients, if they can get full payment from more affluent clients?
Another problem is the issue of implementation and roll-out. The new scheme looks good on paper. But establishing 150,000 health and wellness centres is much easier said than done. This is especially true given that doing this will require extensive collaboration and coordination with India’s 29 states and seven Union Territories which have varying levels of capacity and competence.
In sum, this is not a negative or pessimistic perspective on India’s new healthcare programme, but a realistic one. Modicare represents a beginning and an initial step that must be taken to bring India’s healthcare system into the 21st century.
Some have criticised the introduction of this new programme as a political stunt designed to influence the results of the national elections to be held in 2019. Regardless of why it was done, this action was essential given the sad and sorry state of India’s current public healthcare system.
The challenge and opportunity is to continue to move the healthcare ball up the field. The goal for whomever becomes the next Prime Minister should be to make India’s healthcare programme not only the “world’s biggest” but also among its finest. Accomplishing this will help to move India from a developing to a developed nation and bring it closer to becoming a full-fledged world leader.
(Frank Islam is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, civic leader, and thought leader.)
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Makkah : The General Authority for Statistics announced that the number of healthcare providers for Hajj 2018 has exceeded 32,579, of which 9,216 are women.
In addition to healthcare practitioners coming from the Ministry of Health, Saudi Red Crescent, and the Food and Drug Authority, there are a number of personnel who provide healthcare services from security and military sectors. The number of medical and paramedic teams that serve Holy Places during Hajj of 2018 has reached 959 teams.
On its daily Hajj statistics bulletin, the Authority stated that the Kingdom has utilized all of its resources and capabilities to provide healthcare, treatment, prevention, and emergency services free of charge. These efforts are carried out by 29,495 of the Ministry of Health’s physicians, pharmacists, nurses, technicians, and administrators. The services include: open heart surgery, cardiac catheterization, renal and peritoneal dialysis, gastrointestinal endoscopy, as well as child deliveries.
The number of working hospitals has reached 25 hospitals in Makkah and Holy Places, with a combined capacity of 4,814 beds. In addition, there are 153 health centers, 106 field teams in Holy Places, and 100 small ambulances. There are cars that function as mobile ICUs to treat urgent cases as well as 80 large ambulances.
So far, the Ministry of Health’s hospitals have performed 142 cardiac catheterizations, 9 open heart surgeries, 761 hemodialysis, 39 gastrointestinal endoscopy, and 568 operations.
The Saudi Red Crescent dedicated 127 emergency centers, 361 ambulances, 20 bikes, and more than 2,867 staff members in Makkah, Madinah, and Holy Places.
All the medical and paramedic teams perform their duties round the clock 24/7 until the fifteenth day of the month of Hajj. The involved authorities have devised comprehensive programs and plans to ensure that all the needs of pilgrims are met. The program includes procedures for emergency cases, utilizing a unified approach to providing medical, prevention, treatment, and emergency services. Using the most advanced healthcare practices, the services are delivered by experienced and skilled healthcare providers for pilgrims and visitors to Makkah, Madinah, and Holy Places, and the roads leading to them.
In addition to healthcare services provided on-land, some services were delivered via air ambulance.
The Food and Drug Authority manages a team of 215 food, drug, and medical equipment inspectors. They support inspection agencies that are responsible for inspecting pilgrims’ meals in Makkah, Madinah, and Holy Places. From the 7 services they provide: inspecting food, drugs, medical equipment coming in through various ports, monitoring food facilities in Makkah, Madinah, as well as inspecting vehicles.
—AG/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Corporate Governance, Markets, Medium Enterprise, SMEs, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
Seattle (Washington) : While the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is making its presence felt across the spectrum globally, India needs to prioritise AI-based predictive analysis to improve outcomes in three core areas — agriculture, healthcare and education, a top Microsoft executive has emphasised.
The initial results in India are promising and if deployed at big scale, AI-based models can help farmers, doctors and educators keep building success stories, Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of Cloud AI Platform at Microsoft, told IANS here.
“For example, AI can help us foresee signs of a student being at risk of dropping out. We have done first such experiment in Andhra Pradesh involving thousands of students,” Sirosh informed.
In 2017, the Andhra Pradesh government expanded the rollout of the experiment to all 13 districts in the state.
In Visakhapatnam district, an application powered by Azure Cloud Machine Learning (ML) processed the data pertaining to all students — based on parameters such as gender, socio-economic demographics, academic performance, school infrastructure and teacher skills — to find predictive patterns.
The results showed that some of the factors leading to students dropping out were insufficient furniture, inadequate toilet infrastructure, etc.
Based on these results, the state government identified about 19,500 probable dropouts from government schools in Visakhapatnam district in the next academic year (2018-19).
“Not just India, AI-based predictive analysis has also helped Tacoma School District here in Washington state improve graduation rate from under 60 per cent to over 83 per cent by managing dropouts,” Sirosh noted.
When it comes to agriculture, Microsoft, in collaboration with the non-profit International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), has developed an AI-sowing app for farmers in India.
The tech giant is using AI and historic weather data to predict the best time for sowing seeds and other stages of the farming process, and pass on that information to farmers via SMS.
“We have done some amazing work, like informing farmers when to sow crops, what is the best time to plant crops during the year, etc. The result is 30 per cent more yield,” Sirosh told IANS.
The farmers do not need to install any sensors in their fields or incur any capital expenditure. All they need is a mobile phone capable of receiving text messages.
To determine the optimal sowing period, the Moisture Adequacy Index (MAI) is calculated. MAI is the standardised measure used for assessing the degree of adequacy of rainfall and soil moisture to meet the potential water requirement of crops.
The data then is downscaled to build predictability and guide farmers to pick the ideal sowing week.
According to Microsoft, ICRISAT has scaled sowing insights in 2018 to 4,000 farmers across Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for the Kharif crop cycle (rainy season).
“We have made AI-based applications very simple for common people to comprehend. They don’t need to be tech-sophisticated. We have simplified the technology for the end-users,” Sirosh added.
The company has also developed a multi-variate agricultural commodity price forecasting model to predict future commodity arrival and the corresponding prices.
The model uses remote sensing data from geostationary satellite images to predict crop yields through every stage of farming.
According to the company, the model, currently being used to predict the prices of “tur” pulse, is scalable and can be generalised to other regions and crops.
On the health front, the Telangana government has adopted Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE), which was developed in partnership with Hyderabad-based LV Prasad Eye Institute.
MINE uses ML and advanced analytics to predict regression rates for eye operations, enabling doctors to pinpoint the procedures needed to prevent and treat visual impairments.
“Under the MINE global consortium, we have built AI models that are very accurate for eyecare, especially for children,” Sirosh said.
The Telangana government is using Microsoft’s Cloud-based advanced analytics solution to screen children from birth to 18 years of age for major conditions affecting their health.
“We are also working hard to improve citizen services in India by creating user-friendly application programming interfaces (APIs) for enhanced speech recognition and translation solutions,” Sirosh added.
People are just starting to understand the power of AI-enabled Cloud in India.
“Our partners like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant and Accenture are leaning in and adopting AI. These are exciting times for AI and its real adoption in the country,” Sirosh said.
(Nishant Arora was in Seattle on an invitation from Microsoft. He can be reached at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Moscow : Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will focus on improving infrastructure, healthcare, education, advanced technologies, labour productivity and incomes of citizens if he wins the Russian presidential election next year.
“The most important issues on which the authorities and the entire society need to focus their attention on are the development of infrastructure, healthcare, education, high technology, as well as efforts to boost workforce productivity… All of these efforts should be aimed at raising citizens’ income,” Putin said at his annual press conference on Thursday, Xinhua reported.
He added that the authorities will have to focus on the above-mentioned aspects if he wins the election.
According to Putin, his election program was practically ready, but he refused to reveal any detail because “the press conference was not the right place to present it.”
Putin said he intended to run for presidency as a self-nominated candidate.
As an independent candidate, he would have to collect at least 300,000 voters’ signatures in his support, while a candidate from a political party would have to collect 100,000 signatures in his support.
Last Wednesday, Putin announced that he would seek a new term in the upcoming presidential election, which he is largely expected to win by a landslide.
The latest public opinion poll of government-owned research center VTSIOM has shown that Russia’s public approval rating of President Vladimir Putin stood at 53.5 per cent as of December 10, up from 53 per cent a week before.
The Russian Federation Council, upper house of parliament, is expected to announce officially on Friday the date of the 2018 presidential election in Russia, previously set at March 18.
—IANS
