General Awareness

GENDER/ HEALTH/ EDUCATION - July 2019

Jul 2019

Dec 01, 2019

E-pharmacies Cannot Stock Meds

According to revised draft regulations by the Union Health Ministry, online medical stores, or e-pharmacies, will not be allowed to stock medicines and will have to tie up with offline retail pharmacies to deliver drugs to consumers.
The original draft regulations for online medicine retailers have been tweaked by the ministry after stiff opposition from so-called brick-and-mortar retailers. The revised draft also has a provision to allow retail pharmacists to deliver medicines at a customer's doorstep.
The initial draft, released August last year, had allowed online sale of medicines, barring narcotics, psychotropic drugs and tranquillizers, by a registered e-pharmacy.
The changes were recently made in the draft regulation, after public consultation held in September this year, to address concerns of retail pharmacists over the impact of online pharmacies on their businesses.

Nov 30, 2019

AIM Is To Be a Springboard For Start-Ups

Innovation is the 21st century buzzword, and the Centre's flagship initiative to promote entrepreneurship is the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), which comes under the NITI Aayog.
R Ramanan, Mission Director, AIM, was at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, recently to inaugurate the Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) on its campus.
AICs are enabling people with great ideas to launch their start-ups in an incubator. The objective of these innovation centres is 'to nurture innovative start-ups in their pursuit to become scalable and sustainable business enterprises.

Nov 29, 2019

Zimbabwe Facing Man-made Starvation

According to Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Zimbabwe is facing man-made starvation with 60% of the people failing to meet basic food needs. She ranked Zimbabwe among the 4 top countries facing severe food shortages outside of conflict zones.

Rise in Indian Students Going to the UK

After years of decline in the numbers of Indian students coming to the UK, figures released r in November show a 63% rise in Tier 4 visas issued, reflecting the largest number of annual grants to Indian students since 2011. New curbs and closure of the post-study work visa in 2012 had led to a steep fall in the number of Indians choosing the UK for higher education, against countries such as Canada, Australia and the US.
As per the UK Home Office, Chinese and Indian nationals together accounted for over half of all Tier 4 visas granted to non-European Union citizens (43% and 11%, respectively) during the year ended September 2019.
Former Home Secretary Theresa May scrapped the visa in 2012, which led to the perception that the UK was less welcoming to international students, and resulted in a steep fall in the number of Indian students from 39,090 in 2010-11 to 16,550 in 2016-17.

Nov 28, 2019

From 2021, JEE (Main) in 11 Languages

Now engineering aspirants from the vernacular medium can have a shot at the JEE. The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main) will be offered in 11 regional languages from January 2021. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has directed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to prepare for conducting the test in at least 11 languages which include Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odiya, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
Earlier conducted by the CBSE, the computer-based test has now been passed on to NTA.
The ministry stated that this would help students continue their schooling in their mother tongue instead of shifting to English or Hindi medium. According MHRD sources, it has asked NTA to also explore possibilities to offer the competitive exams in as many languages as possible.

Nov 27, 2019

New AIDS Infections Falling Globally

According to a new report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), there were 37.9 million people living with HIV in 2018 worldwide, up from 37.2 million in 2017.
The report also says 24.5 million infected people using antiretroviral therapy (ART) are living healthier and longer lives, indicating that there has been a drop in death rate.
Annual new infections, which indicate whether an epidemic is growing or ebbing, reduced to 1.7 million in 2018, down from 1.8 million the year before, according to the report.
Though new infections have declined by 40% worldwide since the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1997, it is critical to reach out to all, including high-risk groups, to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
In India, new HIV infections declined by 27% between 2010 and 2017, the last year for which data is available. The number people living with HIV fell from 2.30 million to 2.14 million during that period despite a 1.24% annual rate of increase in the country's population that stands at 1.36 billion.

CBSE Moots New Question Paper Pattern

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) would introduce major changes in the pattern of question papers for classes 10 and 12 by 2023 to boost creative, critical and analytical thinking among students.
While this year, students of Class 10 will get 20% objective questions and 10% questions based on creative thinking, by 2023, question papers for classes 10 and 12 will be based on creative, innovative and critical thinking. Vocational subjects do not find takers in India.
There is also a need to promote proper linkages and bonding among key stakeholders in the schooling system including infrastructure, teachers, parents and students.
As per CBSE Secretary Anurag Tripathi, the new education policy, he said it aims at bridging the gap between vocational and main subjects.

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