-The Hindu They write to Prime Minister asking him to renegotiate the draft proposal to waive intellectual property rights on vaccines and highlight the need for active engagement to improve it A group of non governmental organisations has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to prod the Union Commerce Ministry into “proactively engaging” with a draft proposal at the World Trade Organisation-TRIPS in Geneva to waive intellectual property rights, mostly controlled by...

-NDTV.com Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that he is "delighted that the entire team of ASHA workers have been conferred the WHO Director-General's Global Health Leaders' Award". New Delhi: ASHA, which means "hope" in English, comprises more than one million female volunteers. The World Health Organization Director-General's Global Health Leaders Awards has recognised ASHA's “crucial role in linking the community with the health system and ensuring that those living in rural...

-The Hindu Business Line Micro and small loans as on March 2022 grew by 21.5 per cent to ₹4,95,281 crore from ₹4,07,675 crore as on March 2021    The advances to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are growing at a good pace, as banks are turning liberal in sanctioning loans. The data pertaining to the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2022 as well FY22 show increase in MSME advances compared to previous year,...

-Press release by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) dated 18 May 2022 Geneva, 18 May 2022 (WMO): Four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. This is yet another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean, and in the atmosphere, with harmful and long-lasting ramifications for sustainable development and...

-The Telegraph  Jon Wakefield picks holes in Narendra Modi government’s twin claims Jon Wakefield was disappointed. India’s health ministry had issued a statement decrying the methodology adopted by the World Health Organisation to estimate excess deaths worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The exercise indicated 4.7 million excess deaths in India, 9.8 times the country’s official Covid-19 death toll. The ministry statement itself didn’t surprise Wakefield. Five times since July 2021,...