Kerala sets up drug price monitor

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health.

Context:

     ★ Kerala Government has announced to set up a price monitoring and research unit (PMRU) to track violation of prices of essential drugs and medical devices under the Drugs Price Control Order (DPCO).

Background:

     ★ More than five years ago, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) had proposed such a system for the States and the Union Territories A society had been registered to get Central assistance for the functioning of the unit.

Price Monitoring and Research Unit (PMRU):

     ★ Kerala is the first State to establish such a monitoring unit as per the proposal of NPPA.

Members:

     ★ The State Health Secretary would be the Chairman and the Drugs Controller would be member secretary of this unit.

     ★ Other members include State government representative, representatives of private pharmaceutical companies, and those from consumer rights protection fora.

     ★ The society would also have an executive committee headed by the Drugs Controller

Functions:

     ★ PMRU  units will provide technical assistance to state regulators.

     ★ To monitor the notified prices of medicines;

     ★ price movement,

     ★ collection and compilation of market-based data of scheduled and non-scheduled formulations,

     ★ Detection of violation of the provisions of Drug Price Control Order;

     ★ Pricing compliance;

     ★ Collecting test samples of medicines;

     ★ Conducting training, seminars and workshops at the state and district levels for consumer awareness.

                                                                                                                 Source:- The Hindu

2,119 children rescued in Telangana

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE -mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.

Context:

     ★ The Telangana police, along with other government departments, have rescued as many as 2,119 children, including 466 girls, were rescued during the fifth phase of Operation Smile.

     ★ Of the 2,119 rescued children, 1,303 were reunited with their families while 816 were sent to rescue homes.

Operation Smile:

     ★ Operation Smile also called as Operation Muskaan is an initiative of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to rescue/rehabilitate missing children.

     ★ It is a dedicated campaign for a month where several activities are taken up by the State Police personnel to trace and rescue the missing children and reunite them with their families

     ★ All children residing in shelter homes, platforms, bus stands, roads, religious places, etc. are to be screened by trained police personnel.

      ★ Before the operation, the Police personnel from each State are properly trained in methodology to extract information from such children tactfully without they getting intimidated, as well as in various provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) JJ Act, Protection of Child Right Act, relevant sections of Cr.PC & IPC and Advisories issued by MHA etc.

     ★ To know the magnitude of the problem, data with full details of number of cases of missing children will be maintained and shared at intra-State and Inter-state level. Information about Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) would be prepared and shared among all rescue teams and stakeholders.

     ★ During the operation, the particulars of such identified children will be uploaded on the 'Missing child' portal of the Ministry of Women and Child Development by the respective State Police.

     ★ Rehabilitation measures whenever needed are to be taken up in coordination with the other line Departments like Department of Women & Child Development, Police, Labour, etc so that scope of re-victimization is eliminated.

     ★ Public awareness to be increased by way of national campaign, advertisement on national media, etc.

                                                                                          Source:- The Hindu

Maharashtra struggles to amend APMC Act [ Editorial / Opinion]

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context:

     ★ Maharashtra government’s attempt to amend the Maharashtra Agriculture Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, 1963, has hit a roadblock again.

      ★ It had to withdraw the Bill from the Legislative Council even after it was passed by the Assembly.

     ★ The amendment Bill has been in the works for over 14 years and owing to its politically and economically important stakeholders, who are farmers, traders and ‘mathadi’ workers (head loaders), the government has struggled to push through the changes.

APMCs in Maharashtra:

     ★ Maharashtra has 306 APMCs.

     ★ The APMC Act had made it mandatory for farmers to sell all their crops in the mandi within a geographically delineated market area under a particular committee’s jurisdiction.

Issue:

     ★ After it was passed in the Assembly last November, the Mumbai and Pune APMCs called a strike, alleging that the proposed amendment severely limited their powers.

     ★ One of the important amendments the Bill seeks to bring about is to free essential items from the purview of APMCs and allow them to be sold outside.

     ★ It is important to note that farmer organisations such as the Shetkari Sanghatana, formerly led by Sharad Joshi, support this amendment.

     ★ Sharad Joshi said that the APMC Act is one of the main reasons why farmers are prey to the monopoly of traders.

Changes:

     ★  The Bill also has a provision that the APMCs can continue to levy cess/market fee on the produce brought and traded in their mandis, but cannot charge anything on goods traded outside.

     ★ The traders’ lobby had said no levy should be charged if the produce was sold outside.

     ★ Following the meeting between the stakeholders and the government, sources said a compromise was reached to abolish this levy altogether.

     ★ One of the amendments that was opposed by traders and farmer organisations was the direct payment to farmers from traders for purchase of more than Rs. 2 lakh, bypassing the Adta (the middleman).

     ★ According to both, the Adta plays an important part as an assurer to both parties, and eliminating his role would be harmful to traders as well as to farmers.

Maharashtra Vs Bihar:

     ★ Maharashtra is the second State after Bihar to attempt such amendments.

     ★ While Bihar scrapped it altogether, Maharashtra is trying to do the same, by first allowing traders or processors to deal directly with farmers.

     ★ Neither they nor the farmers will have to go to the APMC yards to buy and sell their produce. The buyers can directly buy from farmers based on the price quoted by them.

     ★ As a matter of fact, unable to get the Bill cleared in both Houses of the Legislature, the government in August 2016 de-listed fruits and vegetables from the purview of the APMC through a resolution.

     ★ Further, it was expanded to all farm products. Apart from the government claim that farmers will get a better price after the amendment, it believes that th    

     ★ The State government will continue to hold meetings with the stakeholders, and is likely to present the Bill, approved by all, in the budget session from February 24, 2019.

                                                                                                      Source:- The Hindu

 ‘Microplastics found in dolphins’

GS PAPER - 03 ENVIRONMENT - Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Context:

     ★ Researchers from the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) in the U.K. examined 50 animals from 10 species of dolphins, seals and whales — and found microplastics in them all.

     ★ Most of the particles (84%) were synthetic fibres — which can come from sources, including clothes, fishing nets and toothbrushes

      ★ while the rest were fragments, whose possible sources include food packaging and plastic bottles.

     ★ Though the animals in the study died of a variety of causes, those that died due to infectious diseases had a slightly higher number of particles than those that died of injuries or other causes.

MicroPlastics:

     ★ Micro-plastics are particles that are smaller than 5 millimetres in size.

     ★ Source

     ★ They enter the environment as primary industrial products, such as those used in scrubbers and cosmetics.

     ★ It could also enter via urban waste water and broken-down elements of articles discarded by consumers. Washing of clothes too releases synthetic microfibres into water bodies and the sea.

     ★ Micro-plastics escape the filtration and treatment processes for waste water, and end up in sites of nature. The durable properties of plastics make them persistent and slow to degrade in the environment.

                                                                                                                      Source:- The Hindu

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