Ebola outbreak is a public health emergency: WHO

The World Health Organization on Friday declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.

It is the largest and longest outbreak ever recorded of Ebola, which has a death rate of about 50 per cent and has so far killed at least 932 people. WHO declared similar emergencies for the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and for polio in May.

The WHO chief, Dr. Margaret Chan, said the announcement is “a clear call for international solidarity” although she acknowledged that many countries would probably not have any Ebola cases.

“Countries affected to date simply do not have the capacity to manage an outbreak of this size and complexity on their own,” Dr. Chan said at a news conference in Geneva. “I urge the international community to provide this support on the most urgent basis possible.”

The agency had convened an expert committee this week to assess the severity of the continuing epidemic.

The current outbreak of Ebola began in Guinea in March and has since spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia, with a suspected cluster in Nigeria. There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola.

The impact of the WHO declaration is unclear; the declaration about polio doesn’t yet seem to have slowed the spread of virus. During a WHO meeting last week to reconsider the status of polio, experts noted countries hadn’t yet fully applied the recommendations made in May, there have been more instances of international spread and outbreaks have worsened in Pakistan and Cameroon.

In the United States, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have already elevated their Ebola response to the highest level and have recommended against travelling to West Africa. On Thursday, CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden told a Congressional hearing that the current outbreak is set to sicken more people than all previous outbreaks of the disease combined.

“I don’t know what the advantage is of declaring an international emergency,” said Dr. David Heymann, who directed WHO’s response to the SARS outbreak and is now a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“This could bring in more foreign aid but we don’t know that yet,” he said.

Other experts hoped the declaration would send more health workers to West Africa.

“The situation is very critical and different from what we’ve seen before,” said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “There are so many locations with transmission popping up and we just need more people on the ground.”

WHO did not recommend any travel or trade bans but said people who had close contact with Ebola patients should not travel internationally. For countries with Ebola, WHO issued various recommendations, including exit screening at international airports and border crossings to spot potential cases. It also discouraged mass gatherings.

WHO said countries without Ebola should heighten their surveillance and treat any suspected cases as a health emergency.

This week, two of the worst-hit Ebola countries Liberia and Sierra Leone brought in troops to enforce quarantines and stop people infected with the disease from travelling. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said no one with a fever would be allowed in or out of the country and warned some civil liberties could be suspended if needed to bring the virus under control.

Chan said while extraordinary measures might be necessary to contain the outbreak, it is important to recognize civil rights.

“We need to respect the dignity of people and inform them why these measures are being taken,” she said.

Building smart cities without energy

Despite India’s effort to achieve energy security by opening new mines and acquiring oil wells abroad, the massive quantity of energy required for smart cities is likely to remain elusive

Recent statements by Ministers from the National Democratic Alliance, when read together, provide insights into the government’s acche din promise. Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu promised to create a hundred smart cities with better facilities, connectivity and a better environment. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said that to reduce poverty, India’s carbon emissions must grow till 2030-40.

But can India access the massive quantity of energy needed to develop 100 smart cities? Will more fossil fuel use, the primary cause for carbon emissions in projects such as smart cities, bullet trains, river linking, necessarily reduce poverty? Can India replicate the 20th century development model of the North nations?

It is unclear whether the new smart cities that Mr. Naidu referred to are greenfield ones or upgraded older cities. Presuming they are the latter, two questions arise: how much energy does upgradation require, and is this energy available?

Fossil fuelled cities

Unlike the fully fossil-fuelled cities of North nations, Indian cities are semi-fossil fuelled. They consist of an older city constructed in a pre-fossil fuel era, with narrow streets made for pedestrians and animal carts and low-rise buildings made from lime binders, and a newer city constructed with broad streets for fossil- fuelled vehicles and concrete high-rise buildings. A conservative energy cost for upgrading 5,000 kilometres in older cities is 600 million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE). That is almost equal to India’s annual total primary energy supply (TPES) worth Rs. 35 lakh crore, i.e., more than double of the Union budget for 2014-15.

Since 2000, India’s energy consumption has grown at 7 per cent per annum, keeping pace with GDP growth. If the additional energy consumption for the smart cities project is spread over the next 10 years, the annual fossil fuel consumption rate will have to jump to 15 per cent.

Unlike money, extra energy cannot be printed at will. It has to be first found, and then accessed. India is already hard pressed to meet the current demand for fossil fuel. Coal contributes 60 per cent of the fossil fuel that India consumes. The country has the fifth largest coal reserves in the world. Yet, it imported 21 per cent of its coal last year, as indigenous production failed to meet demand. Consequently, India’s power utilities enforce regular rolling power cuts. Opening new coal mines has its own problems. According to former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, untapped coal blocks are in dense forests that constitute only 2.5 per cent of the country’s area. Opening them will further endanger our forests.

Indigenous oil and gas reserves and production are low. Increasing imports will burden the economy, particularly if, as market analysts predict, instability in the Middle East prolongs and oil prices jump from $110 to $150 per barrel.

The party is over. We have hit peak oil and new oil discoveries have been few and small. Oil production has remained at 85 mbd for the last decade, despite rising demand. Peak gas will take place two-three decades later. Replacing oil and gas with coal will increase atmospheric carbon dioxide rapidly, and green and nuclear energies cannot replace fossil fuels.

Despite India’s effort to achieve energy security by opening new mines and acquiring wells abroad, the massive quantity of energy required for smart cities is likely to remain elusive.

Other Asian countries

Comparing India’s carbon emissions, development, and the percentage of poor people with other Asian countries that share the same tropical ecological space throws light on the second question.

India has a per capita carbon emission of 1.5 T per annum. Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos emit 20 per cent, and Bhutan two thirds of that amount. Yet, the Human Development Index (HDI) scores of India and these countries are similar, ranging from 0.515 to 0.554. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) puts about half of the population in India, Cambodia, Laos and Bangladesh and a quarter in Bhutan, under the poverty line. Sri Lanka’s has done much better. Its HDI is at 0.715, placing it 46 ranks above India, and has only 5 per cent of its population below the MPI line. Yet its per capita carbon emission is 0.6 T per annum, 60 per cent less than India’s.

Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos and Sri Lanka matched or emulated India’s HDI and MPI scores but with significantly lower per capita emissions. Their performance questions Mr. Javadekar’s statement. How did they do it?

First, they used proportionally less fossil fuels, whose contribution ranged from 25 to 50 per cent of their TPES, compared to India’s 73 per cent, and hence lowered their per capita carbon emissions. Second, lower urbanisation in these countries results in less energy consumption and emissions. Cities consume over 75 per cent of TPES of a country but produce only 5 per cent of it. Third, India’s greater reliance on fossil fuels makes its economy less energy efficient and more polluting, consequently leaving less per capita energy available for poverty alleviation.

The energy density of fossil fuels is very high, and requires large investments in mining, transport, power generation and distribution. Only the state and big business can make the large investments required to produce energy from fossil fuels. To recover investments, it makes sound business sense to sell it for profit rather than to alleviate poverty. Biomass has an energy density that is half to a fourth of fossil fuels, and its energy conversion technologies are simpler, requiring smaller investments. Energy from these sources is cheaper and more accessible to the poor to meet daily needs.

In the last two decades, India’s economy has grown rapidly, but so has the gap between the rich and the poor. India’s GDP quadrupled.India’s Gini index, a measure for income inequality where zero denotes complete equality, is up from 0.32 to 0.38. For two decades India has sung the 10 per cent growth mantra, paying little heed to distributive justice.

There is growing consensus that “trickle down” benefits of growth have been weak in India. If the trends of the last two decades continue, it will take India several decades to lift the people under the poverty line above it, provided global warming and peak oil don’t tip the global economy into a crisis. If either happens, the poorest and the most vulnerable will be impacted the most.

To be more convincing, Mr. Naidu should share his energy costing and supply analysis for the proposed 100 new smart cities. The Ministers for Railways and Water Resources should do the same for the bullet train and river linking projects. And Mr. Javadekar must argue his “more emissions for poverty reduction” statement. Else there will be further gain maximisation for a few.

All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968 Amended

The Government of India has amended All India Services (Conduct) Rules,1968, in rule 3(1) after sub-rule (1) by inserting sub-rule (1A) and rule 3(2) after sub-rule (2A) by inserting sub-rule (2B) and these rules are called the All India Services (Conduct) Amendment Rules, 2014. Under sub-rule (1A), every member of the Service shall maintain:- (i) High ethical standards, integrity and honesty; (ii) Political neutrality; (iii) Promoting of the principles of merit, fairness and impartiality in the discharge of duties; (iv) Accountability and transparency; (v) Responsiveness to the public, particularly to the weaker section; (vi) Courtesy and good behaviour with the public. Under sub-rule (2B), every member of the Service shall:- (i) Commit himself to and uphold the supremacy of the Constitution and democratic values; (ii) Defend and uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of State, public order, decency and morality; (iii) Maintain integrity in public service; (iv) Take decisions solely in public interest and use or cause to use public resources efficiently, effectively and economically; (v) Declare any private interests relating to his public duties and take steps to resolve any conflicts in a way that protects the public interest; (vi) Not place himself under any financial or other obligations to any individual or organisation which may influence him in the performance of his official duties; (vii) Not misuse his position as civil servant and not take decisions in order to derive financial or material benefits for himself, his family or his friends; (viii) Make choices, take decisions and make recommendations on merit alone; (ix) Act with fairness and impartiality and not discriminate against anyone, particularly the poor and the under-privileged sections of society; (x) Refrain from doing anything which is or may be contrary to any law, rules, regulations and established practices; (xi) Maintain discipline in the discharge of his duties and be liable to implement the lawful orders duly communicated to him; (xii) Be liable to maintain confidentiality in the performance of his official duties as required by any laws for the time being in force, particularly with regard to information, disclosure of which may prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of State, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, friendly relation with foreign countries or lead to incitement of an offence or illegal or unlawful gains to any person; (xiii) Perform and discharge his duties with the highest degree of professionalism and dedication to the best of his abilities.

Nuclear Power Plants

At present, nuclear power plants are in operation in the states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu & Uttar Pradesh. The details of their location and capacity are as follows: Location & State UNITS Capacity (MW) Total Capacity (MW) Tarapur, Maharashtra TAPS-1 160 1400 TAPS-2 160 TAPS-3 540 TAPS-4 540 Rawatbhata, Rajasthan RAPS-1* 100* 1180 RAPS-2 200 RAPS-3 220 RAPS-4 220 RAPS-5 220 RAPS-6 220 Kalpakkam, Tamilnadu MAPS-1 220 440 MAPS-2 220 Narora, Uttar Pradesh NAPS-1 220 440 NAPS-2 220 Kakrapar, Gujarat KAPS-1 220 440 KAPS-2 220 Kaiga, Karnataka KGS-1 220 880 KGS -2 220 KGS -3 220 KGS -4 220   *under extended shutdown for techno-economic assessment for its continued operation                                               In addition, Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) unit-1 (1000 MW) at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu has also been connected to the grid on October 22, 2013 and has already reached full power on June 07, 2014.                                  Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant-2 (KKNPP) unit-2 (1000 MW) at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu is currently under commissioning and three nuclear power projects under construction in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. The details are:                Project Location & State Capacity (MW) KAPP 3&4 Kakrapar, Gujarat 2 x 700 RAPP 7&8 Rawatbhata, Rajasthan 2 x 700 PFBR Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu 500                               In the XII Five Year Plan, start of work isplanned on new projects in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. The details are: Project Location Capacity (MW) Indigenous Reactors GHAVP 1&2 Gorakhpur, Haryana 2 x 700 CMPAPP 1&2 Chutka, Madhya Pradesh 2 x 700 Mahi Banswara, 1&2 Mahi Banswara, Rajasthan 2 x 700 Kaiga 5&6 Kaiga, Karnataka 2 x 700 FBR 1&2 Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu 2 x 500 AHWR Location to be decided 300 Reactors with Foreign Cooperation KKNPP 3&4 Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu 2 x 1000 JNPP 1&2 Jaitapur, Maharashtra 2 x 1650 Kovvada, 1&2 Kovvada, Andhra Pradesh 2 x 1500 ChhayaMithiVirdi, 1&2 ChhayaMithiVirdi, Gujarat 2 x 1100

Sending of First Indian to Moon

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS) have been pursuing Chandrayaan-2 as a joint mission under which, ROSCOSMOS had the responsibility for the Lander and ISRO had the responsibility to realize the Rover Module, Orbiter and the launch by GSLV. Consequent to the failure of the Russian-led sample return mission to Phobos (one of the moons of Mars), ROSCOSMOS communicated the shift in the approach for India-Russia joint mission, in May 2012, which called for a major programmatic realignment and lead to re-definition of Chandrayaan-2, with an Indian Lander. Subsequently, based on the recommendations of an integrated programmatic review conducted at ISRO, Chandrayaan-2 has been reconfigured with an Indian Orbiter, Lander and Rover for in-situ investigation of the lunar surface. The revised Chandrayaan-2 project with Indian Lander is currently under process in ISRO for approval by the Government. Based on the assessment of the progress, the project is likely to be completed by 2016-2017. The Chandrayaan-2 is an unmanned mission to Moon. There is no immediate plan for manned mission to Moon.

Installation of Doppler Weather Radars

As on today, 2 Nos. of polarimetric Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) systems at Delhi- Lodi Road and Jaipur, respectively, are functional along with 16 Nos. non-polarimetric DWR systems, respectively at Chennai, Sriharikota, Machilipatnam, Visakhapatnam, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bhuj, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Patiala, Delhi Palam, Lucknow, Patna, Mohanbari, Agartala and Bhopal, in other parts of the country. Installation of 3 Nos. of non-polarimetric DWRs at Paradip, Goa and Karaikal is taken up now. Based on scientific assessment of the needs for further augmentation of observing system network, comprising Doppler Weather Radars, rain radars, Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs), Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs), Snow Gauges etc has been formulated for western Himalayan states of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Data generated from all observing systems viz. surface and upper air observations, satellite observations, aircraft observations, DWRs etc. are fully used by various forecast models to generate most representative initial state 3-D structure of the atmosphere and high resolution (9km grid scale) forecasts over India to predict heavy rainfall occurrences. Range of Doppler Weather Radar for surveillance is approximately 500Kms. However, for quantitative rain estimation it is restricted to around 100 Kms. and for velocity it is around 200 Kms. Only if operated in rapid scanning cycle. DWR network is primarily employed to improve the severe weather surveillance capability including tropical cyclones and for operating now-casting (very short range up to 6h in advance) service (operated for about 140 locations across India).

More cancer institutes in states planned Dr Harsh Vardhan launches “Sunita”- symbol of tobacco victimhood

Meet Sunita. This 27-year-old, whose face is disfigured by oral cancer, is today a symbol of tobacco victimhood. Like hundreds of thousands of tobacco users in India she has seen her whole family ruined because of her four-year habit of chewing the deadly material that came in two-rupee pouches. Sunita, who is a mother of two from a small town in Madhya Pradesh, has survived, but only for now. Her doctor says there is a 50 percent possibility of the disease recurring. And if that happens, chances of survival are remote. Today, she struggles through life with part of her face gone, and suffers pain whenever she tries to eat and drink. Together with members of her traumatised family, Sunita is ready to share with the world of tobacco victims her agonising story. The only message she has is –stay away from all types of tobacco. “Nobody should suffer what I have suffered”, she implores. The Ministry of Health, Government of India, on Thursday unfurled “Sunita”, a testimonial campaign highlighting the devastating effect of smokeless tobacco (‘gutka’, ‘zarda’, ‘khaini’,etc.) especially on women. A resource website,http://ntcptobaccocontrolpsa.inhosting health spots and tobacco use disclaimers in high resolution for use in films and TV shows, was also inaugurated. Sunita’sstory has been made into a 30-second film which is included in the website and will also be screened in cinema theatres across India as well as on government and private TV channels. The website has been developed by the Ministry with technical assistance from World Lung Foundation. It will be a repository of anti-tobacco health spots. All film producers, TV programmers and cinema theatre owners will be able to download the spots and HD disclaimers as mandated in the Control of Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) Rules regulating depiction of tobacco products or in their use in films and TV programmes. Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Health Minister, who inaugurated the website, announced that the Ministry is planning to set up modern cancer hospitals all over India. It is also working to strengthening legal controls on tobacco distribution. The Minister said that the first Budget of ShriNarendraModi government effected a 61 percent hike in tax rates on cigarettes. “Just the enhanced revenue which will flow in would be enough to fund 12 new AIIMS in the country,” Dr Harsh Vardhan remarked. The Ministry of Health has already formed two committees to recommend measures on how to address the social and legal aspects of the war against tobacco use which it has launched. “This should not remain a government agenda. I would like to involve social groups and civil society. The fight will be long and arduous, but we should not lose hope,” Dr Harsh Vardhan added.