Janaushadhi Diwas
- Ministry of Chemicals and fertilizers has decided to celebrate 7th March 2019 as ‘Janaushadhi Diwas’ across India.
- It is to provide further impetus & create awareness about the use of generic medicines.
- Under Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana around 5050 Janaushadhi stores were opened.
- It has provided the awareness about the availability of the high quality affordable generic medicines in the country.
- About 10-15 lakh people benefit from Janaushadhi medicines per day.
- The market share of generic medicines has grown over 3 fold from 2% to 7% in last 3 years.
Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Project
- India signed a loan agreement with the World Bank for 96 Million US dollars for additional financing of Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Project.
- The world bank, through the Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery project has been supporting the state government since 2014.
- The project helps to restore housing and rural connectivity, and to build resilience of communities.
- The funding will help in further reconstruction of bridges, road and river banks protection works.
- It will also help to increase the technical capacity of the state entities to respond promptly.
National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories
- NABL has launched a scheme called Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS) for Basic Composite (BC) Medical Laboratories.
- It is a Constituent Board of Quality Council of India.
- It has been established with the objective of third-party assessment of the technical competence of testing including medical and calibration laboratories, proficiency testing providers and reference material producers.
- It provides accreditation in all major fields of Science and Engineering.
- It also offers accreditation for Proficiency testing providers.
Protecting the Biodiversity zones
- Goa State Biodiversity Board (GSBB) recently introduced a tagging system to ensure communities residing within the biodiversity zone get Access Benefit Share (ABS) from their profits.
- The tag will show the ingredients used are sourced from the nature.
- The sellers are supposed to pay 0.01 % of their annual profit to the GSBB.
- GSSB will then use this amount to protect the habitat from where the ingredients are procured.
- This initiative is also expected to boost the products’ sale.
- However very few industries has joined the scheme.
Forward Search Experiment (FASER)
- It is a new experiment announced by European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
- It will complement CERN’s ongoing physics program, extending its discovery potential to several new particles.
- It will look for light and weakly interacting particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
- It will search for a suite of hypothesized particles including dark photons, particles which are associated with dark matter, neutralinos and others.
- Dark matter is a hypothesized kind of matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic force and consequently cannot be directly detected using emitted light.
- The mysterious dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe.
Swachh Survekshan awards 2019
- The Swachh Survekshan awards 2019 were conferred by President recently.
- It is given by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
- Indore is India's cleanest city for the third straight year .
- The New Delhi Municipal Council area was given the Cleanest Small City award and Uttarakhand's Gauchar was adjudged the Best Ganga Town.
- The awards are based on the survey conducted by the MoHUA.
- MoHUA conducted its first survey Swachh Survekshan survey for ranking 73 cities (Urban Local Bodies) in 2016.
- The survey was conducted under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).
Source: PIB, The Hindu, Indian Express