NITI Aayog
NITI Aayog releases ‘Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India'

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about the Public Health Surveillance highlights - facts for prelims) + Mains ( GS II Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.+ governance - can be used as fodder in Health related questions of GS II)
What's the NEWS

• NITI Aayog today released a white paper: Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India with the vision:
• To make India's public health surveillance system more responsive and predictive to enhance preparedness for action at all levels.
• Citizen-friendly public health surveillance system will ensure individual privacy and confidentiality, enabled with a client feedback mechanism.
• Improved data-sharing mechanism between Centre and states for better disease detection, prevention, and control.
• India aims to provide regional and global leadership in managing events that constitute a public health emergency of international concern.

Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance - Important takeaways for fodder

• ‘Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India is a continuation of the work on health systems strengthening.
• It contributes by suggesting mainstreaming of surveillance by making individual electronic health records the basis for surveillance.
• Public health surveillance (PHS) is an important function that cuts across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of care. Surveillance is ‘Information for Action'.
• It envisions a citizen-friendly public health system, which will involve stakeholders at all levels, be it individual, community, health care facilities or laboratories, all while protecting the individual's privacy and confidentiality.'
• The white paper lays out India's vision 2035 for public health surveillance through the integration of the three-tiered public health system into Ayushman Bharat.
• It also spells out the need for expanded referral networks and enhanced laboratory capacity.
• The building blocks for this vision are an interdependent federated system of governance between the Centre and states, a new data-sharing mechanism that involves the use of new analytics, health informatics, and data science including innovative ways of disseminating ‘information for action'.

Health
Regulatory provisions for approval of vaccines in India
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about CDSCO and its role in approving the emergency use of vaccine + CDSCO guidelines and its comparison with FDA guidelines)
What's the NEWS

• Three vaccine developers have now made applications to the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), India's drug regulator, seeking emergency use approval for their candidate Covid-19 vaccines which are still under trials.

Vaccine candidates
COVISHIELD:

• Pune-based Serum Institute of India has sought approval for its version of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, which it has been testing in India for the last few months.
• The candidate is currently in phase-III trials in India. In its application, Serum has submitted the safety data from phase I and phase II trials, while the effectiveness data has been sourced from phase-III trials of the same vaccine in the UK and Brazil.

COVAXIN:

• Bharat Biotech, a Hyderabad-based company which is developing a vaccine, Covaxin, in collaboration with National Institute of Virology, an ICMR institute in Pune, has started phase-III trials only recently, and is yet to enrol all the participants as per its design.
• Its application is based mainly on the safety data from phase-I and phase-II trials.

BNT162b2:

• US pharmaceutical major Pfizer hasn't carried out clinical trials in India of its vaccine, developed in collaboration with BioNTech, but has still sought an approval to use it here based on the results of the trials conducted in the US.
• The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the first one to receive the regulator's approval anywhere in the world, having been granted emergency use authorisation in the UK last week.

Know! the regulatory provisions for approval of vaccines in India

• Clinical trials of new drugs and vaccines, and their approvals, are governed by the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019.
• These Rules do not use the term "emergency use authorisation".
• This term is used mainly by the regulatory agencies in the US and some other countries, and has become popular in the context of the current epidemic.
• In Indian regulatory system the 2019 rules provide for "accelerated approval process" in several situations that would include the one like the current pandemic.
• In such situations, there is a provision for granting approval to a drug that is still in clinical trials
• Accelerated approval may also be granted to a new drug if it is intended for the treatment of a serious, or life-threatening condition, or disease of special relevance to the country, and addresses unmet medical needs
• It makes it clear that a new drug, or a vaccine, can be considered for approval if "remarkable" effectiveness is reported even from phase-II trials.
• It may be considered for grant of marketing approval by the central licensing authority based on phase-II clinical trial data.
• In such cases, additional post licensure studies may be required to be conducted after approval to generate the data on larger population
• The approval granted to drugs or vaccines that are still in clinical trials is temporary, and valid only for one year.
• The 2019 Rules do not say anything specific about whether data from a trial conducted in another country can be considered while assessing an application for accelerated approval to a drug or vaccine to be used in India.

US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) guidelines

• The FDA has made it clear that an emergency use authorisation can be considered only after sufficient data from phase-3 trials are generated, and an application cannot be made on the basis of data only from phase-1 or phase-2 trials.
• It has also said that preliminary phase-3 data should show at least 50% effectiveness in preventing the disease, and that this data needed to be generated from "well over" 3,000 trial participants.

Bilateral Relations
Mount Everest new height declared
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about Mt. Everest and its new height declaration by China -Nepal)
What's the NEWS

• The Foreign Ministers of Nepal and China jointly certified the elevation of Mount Everest at 8,848.86 metres above sea level - 86 cm higher than what was recognised since 1954.
• The common declaration meant that the two countries have shed their long-standing difference in opinion about the mountain's height - 29,017 feet (8,844 m) claimed by China and 29,028 ft (8,848 m) by Nepal.
• In feet, the new elevation is about 29,031 ft, or about 3 ft higher than Nepal's previous claim.

Know! about the earlier measurement of 8,848 m

• This was determined by the Survey of India in 1954, using instruments like theodolites and chains, with GPS still decades away.
• The elevation of 8,848 m came to be accepted in all references worldwide - except by China. Mount Everest rises from the border between Nepal and China.

New measurement

• The devastating earthquake of April 2015 triggered a debate among scientists on whether it had affected the height of the mountain.
• The government subsequently declared that it would measure the mountain on its own, instead of continuing to follow the Survey of India findings of 1954.
• New Zealand, which shares a bond with Nepal over the mountain, provided technical assistance.

Prelims Factoids
Aurora borealis
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about aurora borealis + aurora + about solar activities)

What's the NEWS

• Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, are usually witnessed far up in the polar regions or the high latitude regions of Europe, like in Norway.
• But, this time they could be visible in regions that are more to the south, such as in the northern parts of Illinois and Pennsylvania in the US.
• This is happening due to a solar flare, which emerged from a Sunspot
• The flare is accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) - a large bubble of radiation and particles emitted by the Sun that explodes into space at high speed.
• The electromagnetic storm could be growing to major status causing the Northern Lights to be visible in more number of areas than usual.

Know! about aurora

• Auroras occur when charged particles ejected from the Sun's surface - called the solar wind - enter the Earth's atmosphere.
• While flowing toward Earth, the fast-moving solar wind carries with it the Sun's magnetic field, which disrupts the magnetosphere - the region of space around Earth in which the magnetic field of our planet is dominant.
• When the Sun's magnetic field approaches Earth, the protective magnetic field radiating from our planet's poles deflects the former, thus shielding life on Earth.
• However, as this happens, the protective fields couple together to form funnels, through which charged solar wind particles are able to stream down to the poles.
• At the north and south poles, the charged particles interact with different gases in the atmosphere, causing a display of light in the sky.
• This display, known as an aurora, is seen from the Earth's high latitude regions (called the auroral oval), and is active all year round.
• In the northern part of our globe, the polar lights are called aurora borealis or Northern Lights, and are seen from the US (Alaska), Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
• In the south, they are called aurora australis or southern lights, and are visible from high latitudes in Antarctica, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia.
• Generally, the auroral oval is confined to the polar regions. But occasionally, the oval expands, and the lights become visible at lower latitudes, as is expected to happen this time.
• This happens during periods of high solar activity, such as the arrival of solar storms.

Know! about solar activities

• Solar activities include solar flares, solar energetic particles, high-speed solar wind and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). These influence the space weather which originates from the Sun.
• Large storms usually occur at the peak of the 11-year solar cycle, or during the three years after the peak.

Defence
INS Kalvari class
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about the submarine - INS Kalvari class)
What's the NEWS

• The Indian Navy celebrated Submarine Day on December 8.
• It was on December 8 that the Indian Naval Ensign was unfurled on INS Kalvari, the first submarine to be inducted in the Indian Navy, at Riga in Latvia, the erstwhile USSR, in 1967.
• The Kalvari was decommissioned in 1996 after 29 years of service.

Know! all about INS Kalvari

• INS Kalvari was a diesel-electric submarine of the Foxtrot Class from the erstwhile USSR.
• It was a 91.3-metre-long submarine, which carried a crew of 75.
• It had a surface speed of 16 knots while the submerged speed was 15 knots.
• After INS Kalvari, three more submarines - Karanj, Khanderi and Kursura - were commissioned in the Indian Navy along with submarine support vehicle Amba.
• A submarine rescue ship, INS Nistar, was also commissioned in 1972.
• The Indian Navy is inducting several submarines in Kalvari Class, named after the very first submarine inducted into service.
• INS Kalvari, a diesel-electric submarine of Scorpene-class, was inducted into service in 2017 after having being built at the Mazagon dock in Mumbai.
• It has been designed by French company DCNS.
• INS Khanderi is the other submarine of Kalvari class currently in service.
• The other submarines slated to join service under this class are Vela, Karanj, Vaghir and Vaghsheer.

Prelims Factoids
9^th edition of Sustainable Mountain Development Summit

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about SMDS)
What's the NEWS

• The ninth edition of the Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) in Dehradun has begun
• The theme for this year is Emerging Pathways for Building a Resilient Post COVID-19 Mountain Economy, Adaptation, Innovation and Acceleration.
• The summit will focus on the overall objective of building pathways toward a resilient and sustainable mountain economy in the context of a post COVID-19 scenario and Climate Change.

Know! about the Summit

• The summit was organised by Indian Mountain Initiative. The summit aimed to deliberate on issues such as water security, migration, climate resilience and innovative solutions for disaster risk reduction and farm sector in the Indian Himalayas. The first edition of the summit was launched in 2011 in Nainital.

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