UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 17-08-2020
iasparliament
August 17, 2020
Swasthya Portal
Union Tribal Affairs Minister has e-launched “Swasthya” Portal.
It is the first of its kind comprehensive platform for health and nutrition related information of the tribal population of India.
Ministry of Tribal Affairs in collaboration with Piramal Swasthya, the Centre of Excellence has developed this Tribal Health and Nutrition Portal.
It has a dashboard, knowledge repository, partner segment, Sickle Cell Diseases (SCD) support corner.
It encourages people with Sickle Cell disease or trait to register themselves.
The dashboard presents data curated from multiple sources for the 177 identified high priority tribal districts.
Sickle Cell Diseases
SCD is group of disorders that cause red blood cells to become misshapen and break down.
With sickle cell disease, an inherited group of disorders, red blood cells contort into a sickle shape.
The cells die early, leaving a shortage of healthy red blood cells (sickle cell anemia) and can block blood flow causing pain (sickle cell crisis).
Infections, pain and fatigue are symptoms of sickle cell disease.
Treatments include medication, blood transfusions and rarely a bone-marrow transplant.
Treatment can help, but this condition can't be cured
Pavitrapati and Aushada tara
Pune based Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, developed an Ayurvedic based Biodegradable Nanofibres Face Mask “Pavitrapati”.
Pavitrapati acts a virus neutralizer to resist against the bacteria / virus.
It has also developed an anti-microbial body suit in the name of “Aushada tara”.
Aushada tara suit has super hydrophobic, breathing, anti-microbial, comfort feeling properties.
The fabric material of the suit has the approval for fighting against the COVID-19.
The suit had cleared the splash resistant tests and it has got good repellent property of any fluids.
The above two products are the Trademarked products of DIAT (DU).
National Digital Health Mission
Union government has launched the National Digital Health Mission, on pilot mode in 6 Union Territories.
It is a flagship initiative of the government like Ayushman Bharat.
The mission seeks to provide an efficient and affordable health coverage through a wide-range of data and infrastructure services.
It comprises six key building blocks or digital systems namely
HealthID,
DigiDoctor,
Health Facility Registry,
Personal Health Records,
e-Pharmacy
Telemedicine.
The National Health Authority (NHA), the attached office of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare which will design, build, roll-out and implement the NDHM.
It will be a voluntary healthcare programme that would reduce the gap among stakeholders such as doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers, etc.
It will be a major stride towards the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.8 of Universal Health Coverage, including financial risk protection.
The scheme would first be tested on a pilot basis in the UTs except Delhi.
Right of Daughters
Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 amended Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
It removed the discrimination clause in inheritance of ancestral properties by giving equal rights to daughters.
It came into effect on September 9,2005.
However, the amendment threw up two questions such as
whether it would apply only to daughters born after September 9, 2005
whether, if they were born before that, it would be limited to those whose father (the coparcener) was also alive on that day
Recently, the Supreme Court (SC) has expanded the Hindu women’s right to be the coparcener (joint legal heir) and inherit ancestral property on terms equal to male heirs.
It ruled that a Hindu woman’s right to be a joint heir to the ancestral property is by birth and does not depend on whether her father is alive or not.
Daughters will now be treated at par with sons of coparceners, and will be granted equal coparcenary rights in their father’s property upon birth itself and their marital status would not affect it.
This judgement only applies to HUF property, and does not affect personal or self-acquired assets held individually.
The law applies to ancestral property and to intestate succession in personal property, where succession happens as per law and not through a will.
Hindu Succession Act, 1956
The Mitakshara school of Hindu law codified as the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 governed succession and inheritance of property but only recognised males as legal heirs.
It applied to everyone who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion.
Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and followers of Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, are also considered Hindus for this law.
Traditionally, only male descendants of a common ancestor along with their mothers, wives and unmarried daughters are considered a joint Hindu family.
The legal heirs hold the family property jointly.
Helium Enhanced Cool Stars
Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) an autonomous institute of DST, have discover He-enhanced cool bright stars among the metal-rich parts of Omega Centauri globular cluster.
This is the first time He-abundance has been found in Omega Centauri.
Globular clusters are the stellar systems with millions of stars formed from the same gaseous cloud.
Omega Centauri is the brightest and the largest globular cluster in our Milky Way Galaxy.
Usually, the stars formed will be homogeneous in their chemical composition of elemental abundances.
But, there are clusters which deviate from this norm.
The different stars of Omega Centauri do not show the same metal content, a parameter that indicates its age, but a large range in it.
The study provides a very important clue for the origin of the He-enhanced population establishing that these are the second generation of stars formed from the metal-rich and He-enhanced material from the first generation of stars.
