Daily Current Affairs Quiz – July 14, 2020

The National Health Policy, 2017 (NHP, 2017) seeks to reach everyone in a comprehensive integrated way to move towards wellness.  It aims at achieving universal health coverage and delivering quality health care services to all at affordable cost.

Objectives

Improve health status through concerted policy action in all sectors and expand preventive, promotive, curative, palliative and rehabilitative services provided through the public health sector with focus on quality.

Specific Quantitative Goals and Objectives

Health Status and Programme Impact

1. Life Expectancy and healthy life
   • Increase Life Expectancy at birth from 67.5 to 70 by 2025.
   • Establish regular tracking of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) Index as a measure of burden of disease and its trends by major categories by 2022.
   • Reduction of TFR to 2.1 at national and sub-national level by 2025.
2. Mortality by Age and/ or cause
   • Reduce Under Five Mortality to 23 by 2025 and MMR from current levels to 100 by 2020.
   • Reduce infant mortality rate to 28 by 2019.
   • Reduce neo-natal mortality to 16 and still birth rate to “single digit” by 2025.
3. Reduction of disease prevalence/ incidence
   • Achieve global target of 2020 which is also termed as target of 90:90:90, for HIV/AIDS i.e, – 90% of all people living with HIV know their HIV status, – 90% of all people diagnosed with HIV infection receive sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression.
   • Achieve and maintain elimination status of Leprosy by 2018, Kala-Azar by 2017 and Lymphatic Filariasis in endemic pockets by 2017.
   • To achieve and maintain a cure rate of >85% in new sputum positive patients for TB and reduce incidence of new cases, to reach elimination status by 2025.
   • To reduce the prevalence of blindness to 0.25/ 1000 by 2025 and disease burden by one third from current levels.
   • To reduce premature mortality from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes or chronic respiratory diseases by 25% by 2025.

Health Systems Performance

1. Coverage of Health Services
   • Increase utilization of public health facilities by 50% from current levels by 2025.
   • Antenatal care coverage to be sustained above 90% and skilled attendance at birth above 90% by 2025.
   • More than 90% of the newborn are fully immunized by one year of age by 2025.
   • Meet need of family planning above 90% at national and sub national level by 2025.
   • 80% of known hypertensive and diabetic individuals at household level maintain “controlled disease status” by 2025.
2. Cross Sectoral goals related to health
   • Relative reduction in prevalence of current tobacco use by 15% by 2020 and 30% by 2025.
   • Reduction of 40% in prevalence of stunting of under-five children by 2025.
   • Access to safe water and sanitation to all by 2020 (Swachh Bharat Mission).
   • Reduction of occupational injury by half from current levels of 334 per lakh agricultural workers by 2020.
   • National/ State level tracking of selected health behaviour.

Health Systems strengthening

1. Health finance
   • Increase health expenditure by Government as a percentage of GDP from the existing 1.1 5 % to 2.5 % by 2025.
   • Increase State sector health spending to > 8% of their budget by 2020.
   • Decrease in proportion of households facing catastrophic health expenditure from the current levels by 25%, by 2025.
2. Health Infrastructure and Human Resource
   • Ensure availability of paramedics and doctors as per Indian Public Health Standard (IPHS) norm in high priority districts by 2020.
   • Increase community health volunteers to population ratio as per IPHS norm, in high priority districts by 2025.
   • Establish primary and secondary care facility as per norm s in high priority districts (population as well as time to reach norms) by 2025.
3. Health Management Information
   • Ensure district – level electronic database of information on health system components by 2020.
   • Strengthen the health surveillance system and establish registries for diseases of public health importance by 2020.
   • Establish federated integrated health information architecture, Health Information Exchanges and National Health Information Network by 2025.

“Healthy States, Progressive India” is a comprehensive Health Index report released by the NITI Aayog. The report ranks states and Union territories innovatively on their year-on-year incremental change in health outcomes, as well as, their overall performance with respect to each other. The report has been developed by NITI Aayog, with technical assistance from the World Bank, and in consultation with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

States and UTs have been ranked in three categories namely, Larger States (21), Smaller States (8), and Union Territories (UTs)(8), to ensure comparison among similar entities.

The Health Index is a weighted composite Index, which for the larger States, is based on indicators in three domains:

1. Health Outcomes (70%);
2. Governance and Information (12%); and
3. Key Inputs and Processes (18%),

with each domain assigned a weight based on its importance. The Index includes 23 indicators which are used to calculate the composite index score and generate overall performance ranks and incremental ranks.

more info

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) launched on 18 February 2016 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an insurance service for farmers for their yields. It was formulated in line with One Nation–One Scheme theme by replacing earlier two schemes National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) by incorporating their best features and removing their inherent drawbacks (shortcomings). It aims to reduce the premium burden on farmers and ensure early settlement of crop assurance claim for the full insured sum.

PMFBY aims to provide a comprehensive insurance cover against failure of the crop thus helping in stabilising the income of the farmers. The Scheme covers all Food & Oilseeds crops and Annual Commercial/Horticultural Crops for which past yield data is available and for which requisite number of Crop Cutting Experiments (CCEs) are being conducted under General Crop Estimation Survey (GCES). The scheme is implemented by empanelled general insurance companies. Selection of Implementing Agency (IA) is done by the concerned State Government through bidding. The scheme is compulsory for loanee farmers availing Crop Loan /KCC account for notified crops and voluntary for other others. The scheme is being administered by Ministry of Agriculture.

Benefits of availing PMFBY scheme:

1. Damages due to loss of land, hail, waterlogging, cloudburst, are covered under the crop insurance scheme.
2. Crops are insured for natural calamities, diseases and pests, other local calamities like hailstorms, landslides, cloudburst and loss from lightning.
3. After harvesting, the insurance company compensates for the damages to the crops kept for drying in the field for the next 14 days due to unseasonal cyclone, hail, and storm damage on an individual basis.
4. Benefits are also given if farmers are unable to sow crops due to unfavourable seasonal conditions.
5. The rates of premium paid by the farmers are very low and the remaining premium is paid by the government to provide full sum insured to the farmers for crop loss in any kind of natural calamities.
6. There is no upper limit on government subsidy. Even if the remaining premium is 90 per cent, it is borne by the government. The farmers can claim for the entire sum insured without any deduction.
7. The use of technology has been encouraged to a great extent. Smartphones, remote sensing drones, and GPS technology are being used to collect and upload crop harvesting data to reduce delays in claim payments.
8. Moreover, the insurance scheme is regulated by a single insurance company, the Agricultural Insurance Company of India.

more info

Naadam (literally “games”) is a traditional festival in Mongolia. The festival is also locally termed “eriin gurvan naadam” , “the three games of men”. The games are Mongolian wrestling, horse racing, and archery, and are held throughout the country during midsummer. Women have started participating in the archery and girls in the horse-racing games, but not in Mongolian wrestling.

In 2010, Naadam was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO. 

The Emirates Mars Mission is a planned space exploration mission to Mars set to launch the Hope orbiter on 14 July 2020.

The mission was announced by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the United Arab Emirates, in July 2014, and is aimed at enriching the capabilities of Emirati engineers and increasing human knowledge about the Martian atmosphere.

Hope is scheduled to reach Mars in February 2021, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the United Arab Emirates’ formation.

The name Hope (Arabic: al-Amal) was chosen because “it sends a message of optimism to millions of young Arabs”, according to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of the emirate of Dubai for whom the lead space center, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), of the United Arab Emirates, is named. The resulting mission data will be shared freely with more than 200 institutions worldwide.

The Emirates Mars Mission “Hope Probe” will be the first probe to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers when it reaches the red planet’s orbit in 2021. It will help answer key questions about the global Martian atmosphere and the loss of hydrogen and oxygen gases into space over the span of one Martian year.

OBJECTIVES

The First Complete Picture of the Martian Atmosphere.

Thwaites Glacier sometimes referred to as the Doomsday Glacier, is an unusually broad and fast Antarctic glacier flowing into the Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. Its surface speeds exceed 2 kilometres per year (1.2 miles per year) near its grounding line. Its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 kilometres (31 and 62 mi) east of Mount Murphy.

It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 1967 after Fredrik T. Thwaites (1883–1961), a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The historian Reuben Gold Thwaites was his father.

Thwaites Glacier is closely watched for its potential to raise sea levels. Along with the Pine Island Glacier, it has been described as part of the “weak underbelly” of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, due to its apparent vulnerability to significant retreat. This hypothesis is based on both theoretical studies of the stability of marine ice sheets and observations of large changes on these two glaciers. In recent years, the flow of both of these glaciers has accelerated, their surfaces have lowered, and their grounding lines have retreated.