Author: Yashna Kumar

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) India Country Office has requested aid from India’s ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune, to test suspected cases of monkeypox for member-states of the South-East Asia Region (SEAR). The SEAR accounts for one-quarter of the world’s population, 40 percent of the world’s poor, and carries roughly 30 percent of the global illness burden. WHO seeks India’s help at a time when outbreaks of the viral disease have been documented in more than ten countries where monkeypox is not endemic, with more than 100 confirmed or suspected infections, predominantly in Europe. The ICMR-NIV in Pune discovered the country’s…

Delhi high court asked JNU student Sharjeel Imam to first approach trial court regarding Sedition case registered against him regarding his ‘allegedly provocative’ speeches on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). A bench of Justices Mukta Gupta and Mini Pushkarna pronounced this order in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling to halt all ongoing appeals and actions related to the charge established under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised Sedition. Following the apex court’s judgement on Section 124A, Imam filed a plea for bail in his already ongoing appeal before the…

US President Joe Biden praised India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi handling of covid as he drew parallels between ‘India’s success and China’s failure’ during a closed session of the Quad Leaders’ Summit in Tokyo on Tuesday.  Biden, according to a senior official, compared India’s accomplishment to China’s failure to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, despite the fact that both countries are similar in size. According to the official, Biden added that PM Modi’s success has demonstrated to the world that democracies can deliver, debunking the “myth that autocracies like China and Russia can handle the rapidly changing world better because…

Russia: According to European Union’s biggest member Germany, the EU will likely agree on an ‘oil embargo’ within days. Moscow recently said that it saw its economic relations with China as it faced isolation from the west over its invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told global business leaders in Davos that the world must increase sanctions against Russia to discourage other countries that want to wage wars from using brute force to achieve their arms. “The sanctions should be maximum so that Russia — and every other potential aggressor who wants to wage a brutal war…

Oklahoma legislators on Thursday passed a bill which bans almost all abortions post-conception. This bill led by the republicans will prohibit all abortions except in cases when it is deemed necessary to save the life of the woman, or in cases of rape and incest. Critics have called it ‘the most restrictive measure’ in the United States.  Last week, the Democrats tried to pass a bill which would have allowed abortions throughout the gestation period.  The bill is yet to be signed by the state’s Republican governor Kevin Stitt, and he has already said that he wants Oklahoma to be…

The Union Health Ministry flagged concern on Friday over the poor pace of COVID-19 vaccination across the States, urging them to speed up the process by saturating all eligible beneficiaries and also implementing the “First Expiry First Out” concept when using vaccines. The Ministry of Health has advised that no vaccination centre or state government should demand formal proof of foreign travel from anybody seeking a precaution dose before travelling abroad. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan informed all States and Union Territories (UTs) of this new rule alongside reviewing vaccination status in a video conference conducted on Friday with Health…

Veena George, Minister for Health and Family Welfare of Kerala held a meeting of the food safety officers. She said that Food Safety licence /registration is now mandatory for all food business operators (FBO) in the State and all FBOs should have secured the FSSAI licence within three months.  In addition to that, all the Food Business Operators would be required to exhibit the toll-free number of the Food Safety department in their shops.  This action has been taken due to the upcoming monsoon season, which makes the maintenance of food safety extremely crucial. ‘ The food safety section has…

Federal health officials plan on extending the COVID public Health Emergency past mid-July, which means that the pandemic-era policies will continue after almost two and a half years of the Covid Pandemic. This measure is being taken due to the rising number of cases in the nation. The department of Human and Health Services has kept on renewing this emergency ever since it was first implemented in January 2020. This declaration allows the US government to give emergency authorization to medicines, vaccines and other medical measures. It also allows the government to provide millions of American citizens with these products…

We celebrate world hypertension day on the 17th of May every year. For this year, the theme is- Measure Your Blood Pressure Accurately, Control It, Live Longer. The significance of this day is enormous as around 26% of the world’s population (972 million people) has hypertension and this number is expected to grow up to 29% by 2025. In India as well, this problem is prevalent on a large scale. According to the World Health Organisation, “nearly 63% of total deaths in India are due to non-communicable diseases, of which 27% are attributed to cardiovascular disease which affects 45% of…

Health experts in South Africa say that the nation is seeing a surge in covid cases driven by two omicron variants. For the last three weeks, the country is seeing high rate in covid cases as well as somewhat high rate of hospitalisation, Professor Marta Nunes, a researcher at ‘Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Analytics’ at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. South Africa’s cases went from an average of 300 cases a day in early april to 8,000 cases per day this week.According to Professor Nunes, the true number of new cases is likely to be higher because the symptoms…