PM-JAY is one of the two components under Ayushman Bharat scheme/National Health Protection Scheme.
It aims to reduce out of pocket hospitalisation expenses by providing health insurance coverage up to Rs.5 lakh/family/year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.
The scheme will integrate two ongoing centrally sponsored schemes Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) and Senior Citizen Health Insurance Scheme (SCHIS).
The NHPS remains disconnected from primary health care services.
Also, a beneficiary covered under the scheme will be allowed to take cashless benefits from any public/private empanelled hospitals across the country.
Coverage - The scheme will aim to target over 10 crore families based on SECC (Socio-Economic Caste Census) database.
To ensure that nobody from the vulnerable group is left out of the benefit cover, there will be no cap on family size and age in the scheme.
The insurance scheme will cover pre and post-hospitalisation expenses.
All pre-existing diseases are also covered.
It will also pay defined transport allowance per hospitalization to the beneficiary.
Funding - The expenditure incurred in premium payment will be shared between central and state governments in a specified ratio
60:40 for all states and UTs with their own legislature.
90:10 in NE states and the 3 Himalayan states of J&K, HP and Uttarakhand.
100% central funding for UTs without legislature.
The State governments have the main responsibility of health service delivery.
States will be allowed to expand the scheme both horizontally and vertically.
Top Performers
Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have emerged as the top performing States under PM-Jan Arogya Yojana Scheme.
The States have provided free secondary and tertiary treatment worth nearly ₹7,901 crore in one year.
More than 60% of the amount spent on tertiary care such as Cardiology, Orthopaedics, Radiation Oncology and Urology etc.
AWSITC
Authorized World Skills India Training Centres (AWSITC) was recently launched by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
It is being set up across 9 cities for the Media and Entertainment sector.
The centres are not just to compete in the World/India Skills competitions buts also to further develop the skilling eco-system for training candidates for the international market.
The state of the art AWSITCs is set up in partnership with the MESC (Media & Entertainment Skill Council).
It will help the candidates to enhance their skill as per the global standards and the training programs will be designed as per the NSFQ level, which will be industry linked.
mHariyali App
The mobile app was launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
It is aimed to encourage Public engagement in planting trees and other such Green drives.
The App provides for automatic geo-tagging of plants and will also enable nodal officers to periodically monitor the plantation.
Bluetongue
It is a non-contagious, viral disease affecting domestic and wild ruminants primarily sheep and including cattle, goats, buffalo, antelope, deer, elk and camels.
It is transmitted by insects, particularly biting midges of the Culicoides species.
The virus which causes this disease belongs to the member of the Reoviridae family.
It is a disease listed under the OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code and it must be reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health.
It has significant distribution in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and several islands in the tropics and subtropics, where culicoides species is present.
Without the insect vector, the disease cannot spread from animal to animal.
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has released diagnostic kits Bluetongue sandwich ELISA (sELISA) and the Japanese Encephalitis lgM ELISA for the control of Swine and Detection of Antigen.
Synthesis of New Ink
A novel security ink has been synthesised by researchers from the Delhi-based National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL).
The ink emits that emits intense red colour when exposed to 254 nm wavelength UV due to florescence.
It emits green colour soon after the UV source is turned off due to phosphorescence phenomenon.
Both red and green can be clearly seen with the naked eye under ambient conditions.
This is the first report that the ink emit different colours at different wavelengths when exposed to UV light of a particular wavelength.
The ink has the potential to be used as a security feature on currency notes and passports.
Fluorescence and Phosphorescence
Phosphorescence is an emission of light from a substance exposed to radiation and persisting as an afterglow after the exciting radiation has been removed.
In Fluorescence, the absorbed light is spontaneously emitted about 10-8 second after excitation,
Phosphorescence requires additional excitation to produce radiation and may last from about 10-3 second to days or years, depending on the circumstances.
