1. HYSTERECTOMIES
TAGS: GS 2: HEALTH ISSUES
CONTEXT: In 2020, a study on Maharashtra’s cane cutters identified a widening blind spot in women’s health: the unchecked rise of hysterectomies. Laws regulating private clinics were poorly implemented, awareness about the procedure of uterus removal was dismal, gynaecological services were absent and no standard protocols existed, the authors noted.
EXPLANATION:
- As per National Family Health Survey-5 data, half of the women reportedly go through hysterectomies before they turn 35.
- This is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of the women who underwent unnecessary hysterectomies.
- After caesarean deliveries, hysterectomies are the second-most frequent procedure in women of the reproductive age group.
When and Why, it should be conducted?
- Medically, hysterectomies should be conducted in the later part of an individual’s reproductive life, or as an intervention during emergencies.
- Noted medical indications for removing a uterus include fibroids (growths around the uterus), abnormal uterine bleeding and uterine prolapse, chronic pelvic pain, and premalignant and malignant tumours of the uterus and cervix. In some cases, oophorectomy, the removal of ovaries (the primary source of estrogen), is also frequently performed, which is a form of surgical menopause and linked to several chronic conditions.
Effects of hysterectomy:
- There is evidence about the long-term effects of hysterectomy both with or without oophorectomy (removal of ovaries).
- A 2022 review of 29 studies found a correlation between hysterectomy and chronic diseases including an increased risk of cardiovascular events, cancers, depression, metabolic disorders, and dementia (Journal of Clinical Medicine).
- In India, hysterectomies in women above 45 years of age were associated with hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and bone disease, aching joints, back pain, depression, and insomnia, among other side effects, impairing their health and ability to work.
Government measures:
- Union Health Ministry in 2022 issued guidelines to prevent unnecessary hysterectomies by listing possible indications of when hysterectomy may be required and alternative clinical treatments for gynaecological issues.
- Government recommended setting up district, State-level and national hysterectomy monitoring committees which to collect data on age, mortality, and occupations, among other details.
- The government also proposed a grievance portal, monitored by the National Hysterectomy Monitoring Committee, for hysterectomy beneficiaries.
- Guidelines emphasise that authorities should report hysterectomies conducted for women less than 40 years of age and incorporate the reason for hysterectomy into the existing screening checklist.
Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana:
- The government’s flagship health insurance programme Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana provides health cover of ₹5 lakhs for 1,949 procedures including hysterectomies.
- The government has authorised 45,434 hospitals to conduct these operations and also developed two standard treatment guidelines for hysterectomy-related procedures.
- These guidelines, developed by the Union Health Ministry and the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) in consultation with health experts, explicitly state that the procedure should be “considered only when childbearing is completed and rarely in younger patients”.
Violation of international conventions:
- Unnecessary hysterectomies violate international conventions to which India is a signatory.
- These include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (which recognises people’s right to control their health and body, including reproductive and sexual freedom), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana:
2. FOUCAULT PENDULUM
TAGS: PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE
CONTEXT: One of the features of the new Parliament building in New Delhi, is a Foucault pendulum suspended from its ‘Constitutional Gallery’ area.
EXPLANATION:
- The original Foucault’s pendulum, named after 19th century French scientist Leon Foucault, is a simple experiment to demonstrate the earth’s rotation.
- When Foucault carried out this experiment for the public in 1851, it was the first direct visual evidence of the fact that the earth rotates on its axis.
How it works?
- The pendulum consists of a heavy bob suspended at the end of a long, strong wire from a fixed point in the ceiling.
- As the pendulum swings, the imaginary surface across which the wire and the bob swipe is called the plane of the swing.
- A Foucault pendulum is not a simple matter of setting up a pendulum with large parts. It must be designed, installed, and set swinging in such a way that the bob’s motion is influenced to the extent possible only by gravity.
- If the pendulum is installed at the North Pole, the pendulum will basically be swinging as the earth rotates ‘below’. But someone standing on the earth’s surface doesn’t notice the planet’s rotation without e.g. looking up at the sky from time to time; instead, to them, the plane of the swing will seem to rotate by a full circle as the earth completes one rotation.
- If the pendulum is installed over the equator, the plane won’t appear to shift at all because it will be rotating along with the earth. On any other latitude, the plane will shift through 360º in “one sidereal day divided by the sine of the latitude of its location”.
How was the pendulum made for Parliament?
- It has been designed and installed by the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), Kolkata.
- The Central Research & Training Laboratory (CRTL) is the R&D unit of NCSM, which in turn, functions under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture.
- The piece, made using gunmetal, has been fixed with an electromagnetic coil to ensure hassle-free movement.
- On the symbolism of the pendulum and its prime place in the hallowed building it demonstrates the Article 51A of the Constitution enshrines every citizen “to develop the scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.
3. SHENZHOU-16
TAGS: PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE
CONTEXT: China launched a spacecraft carrying three astronauts, including its first civilian, to its Tiangong space station on May 30. This is the China’s fifth manned mission to a fully functional space station since 2021.According to state media, the spacecraft, the Shenzhou-16, was launched atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert in northwest China at 9:31 am.
EXPLANATION:
- The crew of Shenzhou-16 includes Jing Haipeng as the leading commander on the mission, as well as Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao, the first Chinese civilian to travel to space. The three astronauts will replace the crew of Shenzhou-15 aboard the Tiangong space station, who have been there since November last year.
- The new crew will stay there for the next five months and will carry out “large-scale in-orbit tests and experiments in various fields as planned. They are expected to make high-level scientific achievements in the study of novel quantum phenomena, high-precision space time-frequency systems, the verification of general relativity, and the origin of life.
What is the Tiangong space station?
- It is operated by China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the Tiangong space station was built by China after the USA barred NASA from working with the Asian country, citing a high risk of espionage.
- The permanently inhabited space station’s first module entered orbit in 2021 and two more modules were added to it in the following years.
- The Tiangong space station, expected to become the sole in-orbit outpost for scientific research after the end of operations for the International Space Station in 2030, is China’s ambitious project to achieve its space dreams.
International Space Station:
- The International Space Station is a large spacecraft in orbit around Earth. It serves as a home where crews of astronauts and cosmonauts live.
- The first piece of the International Space Station was launched in November 1998. A Russian rocket launched the Russian Zarya (zar EE uh) control module.
- It orbits Earth at an average altitude of approximately 250 miles.
- It travels at 17,500 mph. This means it orbits Earth every 90 minutes.
- NASA is using the space station to learn more about living and working in space.
4. DIGITAL PAYMENT
TAGS: GS 3: ECONOMY
CONTEXT: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has conceptualised a lightweight payment and settlements system, which it is calling a “bunker” equivalent of digital payments, which can be operated from anywhere by a bare minimum staff in exigencies such as natural calamities or war.
EXPLANATION:
Objective:
- Such a lightweight and portable payment system could ensure near zero downtime of the payment and settlement system in the country.
- It will keep the liquidity pipeline of the economy alive and intact by facilitating uninterrupted functioning of essential payment services like bulk payments, interbank payments and provision of cash to participant institutions.
- The system is expected to process transactions that are critical to ensure the stability of the economy, including government and market related transactions.
- Having such a resilient system is also likely to act as a bunker equivalent in payment systems and thereby enhance public confidence in digital payments and financial market infrastructure even during extreme conditions.
How will it work?
- Infrastructure for this system will be independent of the technologies that underlie the existing systems of payments such as UPI, NEFT, and RTGS.
- The central bank has not offered a timeline for the launch of this payments system yet.
- In its Annual Report for 2022-23 published on May 30, RBI says that the lightweight and portable payment system is expected to operate on minimalistic hardware and software and would be made active only on a “need basis”.
How will the lightweight system be different from UPI?
- According to the RBI, existing conventional payments systems such as RTGS, NEFT, and UPI are designed to handle large volumes of transactions while ensuring sustained availability. As a result, they are dependent on complex wired networks backed by advanced IT infrastructure.
- However, catastrophic events like natural calamities and war have the potential to render these payment systems temporarily unavailable by disrupting the underlying information and communication infrastructure. Therefore, this new system is designed to be prepared to face such extreme and volatile situations.
Unified Payments Interface(UPI):
- Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one hood.
- It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.
NEFT and RTGS:
5. EMISSION FROM AVIATION SECTOR
TAGS: PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE
CONTEXT: Last week, France announced a ban on all short-haul domestic flights. A month earlier, the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, one of the busiest in Europe, banned private jets and small business planes. There is a growing clamour in Europe for a bigger crackdown on private aviation sector.
EXPLANATION:
- As the world continues to fall behind in the race against time to curb global warming, desperate and non-conventional measures seem to be beginning to kick in.
- Aviation is a relatively small contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and attempts to curtail these have not been very fruitful till now.
- Air transport, globally, accounts for just about 2 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions every year, and less than two per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.
- Though the airline industry’s contribution to the overall greenhouse gas emissions has been rather modest, it is still considered a big worry, mainly due to two reasons it is generated by a very small fraction of global population, and it is projected to grow at a very fast pace.
- Also, airplanes produce non-CO2 emissions as well, and their impact on global warming is equally significant. According to the UN Climate Change, if the non-CO2 emissions, like water vapour, are also accounted for, the airline industry would be responsible for causing almost five per cent of historical global warming.
- Emissions from international aviation falls in a grey area. The emissions from planes flying within the boundaries of a country are attributed to that country. But emissions from airlines making international flights are not attributable to any country.
- Along with international shipping, international aviation forms a separate class of emissions those from bunker fuel. It also means that no country has any responsibility to curtail these emissions. These are not covered under the Paris Agreement.
Offset mechanism:
- In 2016, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) put in place an offset mechanism to ensure that any increase in emissions over 2020 levelsis compensated for by the airline industry through investment in carbon saving projects elsewhere.
- It is called Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, or CORSIA, the offset plan is supposed to run from 2021 to 2035.
- Reducing aviation emissions through other means has not proved to be easy. Unlike road or rail travel, aviation does not have viable technology alternatives for shifting to cleaner fuels. Biofuels have been tried and so have hydrogen fuel cells. Solar powered planes have also made trips. But use of these alternative fuels for flying large commercial airliners is still some distance away.
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
- It was created in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world.
- It is a specialized agency of the United Nations.
- It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security and facilitation, efficiency, economic development of air transport as well as to improve the environmental performance of aviation.
- The organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 192 Member States.
Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, or CORSIA:
- CORSIA is the first global market-based measure for any sector and represents a cooperative approach that moves away from a “patchwork” of national or regional regulatory initiatives.
- It offers a harmonized way to reduce emissions from international aviation, minimizing market distortion, while respecting the special circumstances and respective capabilities of ICAO Member States.
- CORSIA complements the other elements of the basket of measures by offsetting the amount of CO2 emissions that cannot be reduced through the use of technological improvements, operational improvements, and sustainable aviation fuels with emissions units from the carbon market.
- CORSIA is considered a breakthrough, but it is not very ambitious. It only seeks to offset emissions that are over and above 2020 levels. It does not deal with total emissions.
