Antibiotics differ from almost every other class of drugs in one important and dangerous way: the more they are used, the less effective they become. For developing countries like India, where antibiotic resistance is growing as a result of over-prescription and misuse, it is only a matter of time before the bacteria win.

CHENNAI – Last year, a 30-year-old teacher suffering from a severe bloodstream infection arrived in my emergency room for treatment. The woman had been in and out of local clinics with a stubborn chest infection and fever, and by the time I examined her, she was receiving chemotherapy for blood cancer.

Instinctively, I treated her infection with an antibiotic from a group of drugs known as “carbapenems,” strong medicines commonly prescribed to people who are hospitalized. But after further tests I discovered that she was carrying a strain of bacteria that is resistant to most antibiotics in our therapeutic arsenal. There was no option but to treat her with drugs that I knew would be largely ineffective; she was lucky to recover.

Sadly, many patients are not so fortunate. Around the world, people are being admitted to hospitals with infections that do not respond to antibiotics, and relatively benign germs – like Klebsiella and E. coli Â– have become potent killers, shrugging off medicines that in the past easily contained them.

Antibiotics are different from almost every other class of drug in one important and dangerous respect: the more they are used, the less effective they become. When microbes are repeatedly exposed to antibiotics, the bacteria eventually win.

Each year, an estimated 750,000 people die from antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) infections, and the death toll will climb unless the global health community acts decisively. In the absence of detailed and reliable reporting from all countries, the British government commissioned a series of reports on AMR, estimating that by 2050, as many as ten million people could die annually from AMR complications. Moreover, the economic impact of “superbug” outbreaks could top $100 trillion; low-income countries would suffer disproportionately.

Uneven and unregulated antibiotic usage is one of the most important reasons behind the AMR crisis. In developed countries, doctors prescribe antibiotics for even the most basic maladies, like the common cold. Stronger regulations of antibiotics prescriptions in these countries, like those implemented in Finland several decades ago, could help to mitigate resistance.

Yet such rules alone will not be enough, because in much of the developing world, antibiotics can be obtained without a prescription. Inequalities in access to medicine, excessive use, and poor sanitation services complicate the problem further. And when farmers uses antibiotics to speed the growth of chickens and other livestock, drug-resistant germs find new ways to enter the environment.

In 2017, the World Health Organization, in an effort to address these challenges, classified antibiotics into three groups and issued guidance for how each class of drugs should be used to treat 21 of the most common infections. For example, the first of these groups consists of medicines that should always be available to patients, preferably by prescription. Amoxicillin, the preferred medicine for respiratory-tract infections in children, is in this group. The second tier includes carbapenems, which, as my patient last year discovered, are increasingly ineffective. And the third group, including colistin and other “last resort” antibiotics, are drugs that must be used sparingly and only for medical emergencies.

Clearly, guidelines are an important first step in addressing the global AMR challenge. But governments, medical associations, and hospitals must also commit to tackling the antibiotic crisis together. That is what the health-care community in India is doing. In 2012, India’s medical societies adopted the Chennai Declaration, a set of national recommendations to promote antibiotic stewardship. Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used his monthly radio address to urge doctors to join the effort.

Still, the AMR threat remains real; containing it will require concerted effort. In India, for example, we must implement the regulation, formulated by the Indian Health Ministry, controlling over-the-counter sales of antibiotics. The WHO’s advice should strengthen support for this move.

India’s Red Line campaign – which demands that prescription-only antibiotics be marked with a red line, to discourage the over-the-counter sale of antibiotics– is a step forward.

Meanwhile, health-care communities in advanced economies must find the political will to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use by people, and in agriculture. “Last resort” antibiotics should never be used as growth promoters in livestock farming, but achieving this will require significant changes to current practices.

Superbugs should strike fear in doctors and patients everywhere, but fear cannot lead to paralysis. The next time a patient arrives in my ward with a treatable infection, I need to be certain that the medicine I prescribe will be effective. Luck should never play a role in a patient’s recovery.

(The Author Abdul Ghafur, a Chennai-based infectious disease consultant, is the coordinator of the Chennai Declaration.)

Source – www.project-syndicate.org

With one quarter of the global tuberculosis cases found in India, a first of its kind survey has shown among all TB patients tested, MDR-TB rate was 6.19% with 2.84% among new and 11.60% among previously treated TB patients.

Any isoniazid resistance among new and previously treated TB patients was 11.06% and 25.09%, respectively. Any drug resistance among new TB patients was 22.54%, with 36.82% among previously treated TB patients and 28.02% among all patients.

Results of this largest and first-ever National Drug Resistant Survey conducted by any country in the world also showed there was negligible rifampicin mono-resistance in the survey and isoniazid resistance was invariably associated with rifampicin resistance. Any pyrazinamide resistance was 6.95% and 8.77% among new and previously treated TB patients, respectively. Among MDR-TB patients, additional resistance to any fluoroquinolone was 21% and any second line drug resistance was 3.84%. Among MDR-TB patients, XDR-TB rate was 1.3%.

A total of 5280 sputum smear-positive pulmonary TB patients (3240 new and 2040 (previously treated) diagnosed at the designated microscopy centres (DMCs) of RNTCP were enrolled in the survey.

There were wide variations in the state-wise levels of drug resistance, highlighting that national level estimates tends to mask the local and focal epidemics that need to be addressed with specific interventions, the survey has said.

With a population of 1.32 billion, India has the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB) and drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) in the world.

The Survey has recommended setting up and strengthening drug resistance surveillance including using state of art next generation sequencing. This will provide the programme with the trends of drug resistance, transmission patterns and mapping of hot spots in different states for better understanding of molecular epidemiology for TB surveillance  and strengthening epidemiologic intelligence for specific interventions based on local epidemiological profile.

India has more new tuberculosis (TB) patients annually than any other country globally, contributing to 27% of the world’s TB burden. About 2.79 million TB patients are estimated to be added annually. The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) notified around 1.94 million TB patients in 2016.

As per the Global TB Report 2017, worldwide approximately 4.1% of new TB patients and 19% of previously treated TB patients have multidrug resistant-TB (MDR-TB), i.e. TB resistant to at least two of the first-line drugs – isoniazid and rifampicin. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), defined as MDR-TB with additional resistance to at least one fluoroquinolone and one second line injectable drug, has been reported by 123 countries.

The proportion of XDR-TB among MDR-TB patients is 6.2% worldwide. The estimated number of MDR/rifampicin resistant (RR)-TB in India is 147 000, accounting for one fourth of the global burden of MDR/RR-TB.

India initiated the programmatic management of drug resistant TB (PMDT) in 2007 to address the emerging problem of drug resistant-TB (DR-TB), and the national PMDT scale-up was achieved by March 2013. The treatment success rate among MDR-TB patients in India is consistently about 46% and the death rate is around 20%, as against the global level of treatment success rate of 52% and death rate of 17%. High rates of treatment failure and deaths are associated with fluoroquinolone resistance in the Indian cohort of MDR-TB patients.

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology Madras has joined hands with Deakin University, Australia, to establish India’s first Bilateral Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Advanced Materials and Manufacturing.

The IIT Madras-Deakin University Centre of Excellence on Advanced Materials and Manufacturing is being set up with seed grant from both Deakin University and IIT Madras. The CoE will execute the recently funded Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) project. The Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Madras,  in collaboration with the  Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University have come together to establish the CoE.

Philip Dalidakis, Minister for Trade and Innovation, Victoria, Australia, inaugurated the Centre of Excellence and unveiled the Signage in the presence of Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, and other dignitaries.

Key research areas of this Centre includes next generation wear-resistant and high temperature alloys, smart and functional materials such as nano-spun fibres and nano-composites for bio applications besides Light and strong materials which encompasses Novel forming techniques for ultra-high strength steels.

The Centre will collaborate with Industries and R&D Organisations such as International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory and Defence Institute of Advanced Technology.

Speaking about this Centre of Excellence, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, said, “This is the culmination of a long, productive and growing Relationship between IIT Madras and Deakin University. We started with faculty and student exchange, graduated to a joint PhD programme, and now to a CoE in Advanced Materials and Manufacturing. The CoE leverages the combined expertise of the faculty of the two universities and will create new materials and next-generation manufacturing techniques at the global cutting-edge.”

The CoE would strive towards establishing a world-class additive manufacturing facility at IIT Madras that complements the facilities at Deakin University. This would position IIT Madras as the Additive Manufacturing research leader in India, and also strengthen Deakin University’s eminence in the field.

The expected outcomes and impact of this centre includes cutting-edge science and innovation, new significant infrastructure at IIT Madras, accelerated growth in student numbers under the joint doctoral program and increased industry interaction and technology translation besides demonstrated collaboration for bilateral funding opportunities and Joint grant proposals, conference and workshops.

The existing researcher-to-researcher relationship and joint doctoral program between IIT Madras and Deakin University would form the platform for growth and increased research commitment through the CoE.

Although IIT Madras and Deakin have invested some seed funding for this CoE, the Centre will be self-sustaining soon with funding from Government, industry and various HR programmes that will be conducted by the CoE. There are a number of industries which are already collaborating with both IIT Madras and Deakin University and they are likely to be the funding partners for the CoE.  

Additional funding from the industry would also be raised for the Centre through specific sponsored and consultancy projects. Regular workshops and hands on training programmes that would be conducted would be for the benefit of academia, research labs and industry. The Indo-Australian Workshop on Advances in Materials and Additive Manufacturing is the first workshop of the CoE, which is being organised between 21-22 March 2018at the Research Park, IIT Madras.

JAIPUR: Elephant rides and night tourism at Amber Fort in Jaipur will remain closed between March 17 and 26 in the wake of Navratri festival.

This has been done keeping in mind the massive crowds that throng the Shri Shila Mata Temple inside the Fort and to ensure the safety of the devotees and the tourists, according to Mr. Pankaj Dharendra, Amber Palace Superintendent.

To facilitate the tourists, the booking for visiting Amber Palace can be availed at Tripolia Gate and Singh Pol. Exit will be from Tripolia Gate from March 18 to 25.

During April, the elephant rides will be reduced to three rounds for each elephant starting from 7:00 am to 10:30 am. In May and June the rides will be further reduced to two per elephant starting from 7:00 am to 10:00 am.

NEW DELHI: India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs  Kiren Rijiju has advocated that law enforcement and security agencies worldwide must collaborate to tackle the threat posed by Cyber Crimes.

Addressing the Valedictory Session of the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) here on Thursday,  he observed that the existing frameworks, programmes and tools are often too slow and bureaucratic to allow for a timely and effective response. Rather than multiple partners investing in and developing the same highly specialised skill-sets and expertise, perhaps a more effective, high-level model would be for law enforcement and relevant partners to focus on distinct core competencies and to make them available to others ‘as a service’, he added.

 He said that Law Enforcement Agencies that seek to keep communities safe are faced with increasing challenges of rapidly evolving technologies, cyber space being the most important.

Here is the text of the Minister’s address to the conference:

 Commission of cyber-crime is getting easier as the extent to which cyber technology provides it easy to commit crime at a faraway place, in total anonymity, and with global reach. Tools and techniques to conduct cybercrime — hacking software, malware — can be downloaded freely. There are even step-by-step video instructions online that explain how to use them.

In fact, crime-as-a-service is also being offered in dark web, we can see from looking at standard consumer technology that it only takes a few iterations of a product for it to become straightforward to use. So the barrier to entry for cybercrime is very minimal — just needs to access internet. In the past systems would have only been available only to technology-savvy cybercriminals. Now such criminal services can be bought and used by anyone, regardless of their technical skills. What this evolution has revealed is the extent to which other criminal activities, beyond economic crime, are now being supported by these infrastructures.

As per National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a total of 33,531 cyber-crime cases were registered during 2014-2016. During 2016, 48.6% of cyber-crime cases reported were for illegal gain (5,987 out of 12,317 cases), followed by revenge with 8.6% (1,056 cases)  and insult to  modesty of women with 5.6% (686 cases). During 2016, cyber-crime (7.7%) was recorded as the fourth largest crime (first Cheating-68.4%,- second criminal breach of trust-11.7%, third forgery-8.6%) in India.

Among the more rampant cyber-crimes under Indian IT Act (various sections) are: tampering computer source documents,   publications / transmission of obscene/ sexually explicit contents,  breach of confidentiality / privacy,  data theft,  cyber terrorism

Among the cyber-crime motives are:   illegal gain,  revenge, insult to modesty of women,  extortion / blackmailing,  sexual exploitation,  causing disrepute,   inciting hate crime against community,  developing own business / interest,  political motives,  disrupt public services,  piracy,  steal information for espionage,  serious psychiatric illness viz. perversion, etc.

Recently we also noticed rise in sophisticated to naïve cyber-crimes in financial sector.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) based malware attack witnessed in two Indian Banks (Union Bank of India — 171 million USD, almost all them are recovered and City Union Bank — 2 million USD only part could be recovered till Feb 28, 2018). In the first Bank case, an employee of the Bank opened an email attachment, which looked like it had come from India’s Central Bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The attachment initiated the malware that hackers used to steal the Bank’s access code for the SWIFT, a system that lenders use for international transactions; the codes were used to send transfer instructions for about 170 million USD to Bank’s account at CitiGroup Inc in New York. However, bank could recover all the money back. In the other case, money was transferred in accounts in Dubai, Turkey and China. But in this case, a partial amount is yet to be recovered.

District of Jamtara in eastern India is getting notoriety for financial frauds. Here the youngsters (all 8^th or 10^th graders & dropouts) are using simple phishing techniques to obtain sensitive financial data (like PIN number, card CVV, etc.) and transfer the money to e-wallets and subsequently to bank accounts. They cleverly entice the victims to reveal OTP just through smart conversation. To obtain the SIMs they use “surrogate SIM” [being very poor and with lack of education, elderly people are lured to provide their biometric authentication through Aadhaar to obtain SIM. Fraudsters obtain 7 to 9 SIMs and pay small amount to the elderly] and transfer the money to “surrogate bank accounts” [Government has opened bank accounts for poor for facilitating government’s direct cash benefit transfer. Such bank accounts are hired by fraudsters to get their debit card on monthly rentals. The poor and elderly are not aware of their cards being misused for withdrawing money]. The fraudsters are also using techniques to evade detection by changing the mobile tower location while making phishing calls to the victims. This they do just by driving their motorbike/car around different mobile towers.

To further complicate the traditional cyber-crime challenges to policing, new technologies like Internet of Things, Virtual Currencies, Advanced Malware, Artificial Intelligence, etc. have taken the challenges to a new level. Coping with such rapid changing technologies by Police has become a huge task for effective Policing. Across many countries many cyber criminals use technologies like darknet, proxy servers, The Onion Router (TOR) services to hide their identity. Extensive use of VoIP, caller ID spoofing, use of crypto currencies, encrypted channel for communication, use of social media have virtually created a syndicates of criminals irrespective of their nationality.

The business of supporting online criminality has become a truly global enterprise, with help desks, regular software updates and platform development roadmaps created to service the needs of their users. In fact having imitated the very best enterprise approaches and unbound by legislative requirements, they have become innovative and agile businesses. This creates a two-tiered, organised criminal enterprise: those committing crimes that directly victimise and those that are automating and supporting the businesses of crime. The question becomes where should law enforcement’s limited resources be allocated: the criminals that carry out the crime, or those that provide the infrastructure that make it possible?

Law enforcement, policy makers, legislators, academia and training providers need to become even more adaptive and agile in addressing the phenomenon. Existing frameworks, programmes and tools are often too slow and bureaucratic to allow for a timely and effective response. Rather than multiple partners investing in and developing the same highly specialised skill-sets and expertise, perhaps a more effective, high-level model would be for law enforcement and relevant partners to focus on distinct core competencies and to make them available to others ‘as a service’.

It is important to consider law enforcement as one of the key partners in ensuring cyber security globally. Prevention campaigns should not focus solely on preventing citizens and businesses from becoming victims of cybercrime, but also on preventing potential cybercriminals becoming involved in such activity. Such campaigns must highlight the consequences of cybercrime for both the victim and perpetrator.

Besides technology, challenges in cyber-crime investigation stems from tack of adequate capacity as also legal challenges. Law enforcement should continue to focus on attribution and intelligence development in order to identify, locate and prosecute key criminal individuals to achieve more permanent impact on the criminal community. Law enforcement must continue to develop and invest in the appropriate specialised training required to effectively investigate highly technical cyber-attacks. A foundation level understanding of cyber-facilitated and cyber-enabled crime, including the basics of digital forensics should be required by all law enforcement officers, especially first responders.

India has sought to empower stakeholders and public through various policy initiatives which had positive outcomes at the operational level, – active partnerships with private sector both for R&D initiatives and also tangible deliverables. Police across the countries also needs to evolve a better coordination, information sharing mechanism and develop mutual trust by respecting the local Laws and Regulations. Without such international cooperation, it would be extremely difficult for a country to address the new age policing single handedly. Steps should be taken to facilitate intensified cooperation across government (law enforcement), to allow information sharing and a coordinated approach to response to cybercrimes and attacks.

Cyber diplomacy is an evolving subject at both bilateral and multilateral levels. India has sought to play a responsible role on both these fronts. Concerns of like-minded multiple stakeholders — the model that India supports — were articulated in the ICANN conference held in Hyderabad, ‘’

BENGALURU:  Stephen Hawking (January 8, 1942 – 14 March, 2018)  passed away in the early hours of March 14, leaving behind a rich intellectual legacy that will dominate theoretical physics for years to come. Coincidentally, March 14^th is Albert Einstein’s birthday and January 8 was the day on which Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy. Hawking held the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position once filled by Isaac Newton. It is indeed fitting that these names are all strung together in the same paragraph and mentioned in the same breath. They are the giants who transformed theoretical physics into the shape that it has taken today.

Hawking’s early work (in collaboration with Roger Penrose) was on singularity theorems in Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This work showed decisively that Einstein’s theory predicted singularities: regions of space and time where our theories no longer hold. Einstein’s general relativity seemed to predict its own demise. There was new physics beyond general relativity.

Another seminal work of his concerns the areas of black holes. Hawking showed that the area of a black hole always increases with time. This suggested an analogy with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts that disorder of a closed system always increases. This analogy was initially not taken seriously because it seemed so farfetched and, indeed, flawed.

However, Jakob Bekenstein, an Israeli physicist, persisted with the analogy, despite the obvious flaw that black holes absorb light and do not let it escape, whereas black bodies in thermal physics emit as well as absorb light. Hawking’s striking insight was to realise that black holes were indeed thermodynamic objects which have a temperature and emit radiation- now called Hawking radiation. This brilliant insight nailed the analogy and has led to deep relations between gravitation, quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics which are still being explored today. Hawking has made many seminal contributions to cosmology, black holes and the relationship between geometry, gravitation and quantum theory, too numerous and technical to mention here.

Hawking brought to the subject a style of mathematical physics that used subtle methods from differential geometry and differential topology to bear on the physics of black holes and cosmology. There is a strong Indian connection here. The idea of a black hole had its roots in the work on the stability of white dwarf stars by S. Chandrasekhar, an American physicist of Indian origin. Hawking’s analysis of singularities and the area theorem relied crucially on an equation discovered by Amal Raychaudhuri, an Indian physicist whose name is perhaps better known abroad than in his native land. The classic book by Hawking and Ellis on the large scale structure of space time summarises some of these developments in a rigorous mathematical way.

Hawking has captured the public imagination both for the boldness of his ideas and the trying circumstances they were developed in. His bestselling book “A brief history of time”, and its sequels, have drawn lay public into the esoteric realms of space, time and black holes.

Hawking is very much a part of popular culture. He has appeared on “The big bang theory”, a popular television serial that pokes gentle fun at the arcane mysteries of theoretical physics and the curiously warped personalities and personal lives of the cerebral and self-absorbed people behind the science.

Hawking is featured in “The SimpsoBookns”, another popular and satirical television cartoon show. He has also been sensitively portrayed by Eddie Redmaynein the movie “The Theory of Everything”.

What is most remarkable and has captured the public imagination is the circumstances in which Hawking did his seminal work. At the age of 21, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative disease (also referred to as motor neuron disease). His doctors gave him two years to live. They were off by about fifty – 50 more years in which Hawking continued to defy the odds and leave his eternal mark on the theories of black holes and cosmology. (India Science Wire)

(The author is a theoretical physicist at Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, and works in the areas of general relativity, quantum theory and quantum information theory.) 

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed confidence that India would achieve the goal of complete elimination of Tuberculosis by 2025.

Inaugurating the “END TB Summit’’ here, Mr Modi said that India had set 2025 as the elimination year as against the global target of 2030.  The government is working comprehensively towards this goal, he said adding that the State governments have a key role of play in this regard. He said he had personally written to all Chief Ministers to join this campaign.  

Delhi End TB Summit would be a landmark event towards the complete elimination of TB, the Prime Minister said. He said every step taken towards the eradication of this disease, is also linked to the betterment of the lives of the poor.

Mr Modi said frontline TB physicians and workers are a crucial part of the drive to eliminate TB. He said those patients who overcome this disease also inspire others.

Citing the examples of Mission Indradhanush and Swachh Bharat, to show how the Union Government is speeding up progress towards desired targets, he said the same would be done with TB.

The global summit has been organized by the World Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Tuberculosis is a highly infectious disease that kills 4.80 lakh people every year in the country. One-fifth of the world’s TB cases are reported from India. TB was responsible for 1.7 million deaths in 2016, despite most cases being curable. Over 10 million people contract TB every year. WHO South-East Asia Region, which hosts about one-fourth of the global population, shares a disproportionate 46% global TB disease burden. 

NEW DELHI: With about 1,400 start ups beginning operations nationally every year, the ability of people to connect, co-mingle and thrive on the energy of new ideas is feeding India’s start-up ecosystem.

Addressing the World Government Summit in Dubai this February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said: “We are creating an innovation ecosystem in India via the Start-up India Programme, India has become a start-up nation.’’

Echoing similar views, Mr. Modi told Uttar Pradesh Investors Summit last month that one-district, one-production would be backed the Centre’s Skill Indi, Start-up India and Stand-up India initiatives.

His message was clear that state government leadership, policies and taxes can be instrumental in shaping dynamics of start-up operations. Therefore, the presence of a positive socio-cultural environment with a wide choice of entertainment and lifestyle options is as important as business enablement and, in fact can prove to be the game changer between cities that make it and those left by the wayside.

Dwelling upon his government’s key programme of Start-Up India, the Prime Minister said: “Our programme is a comprehensive action plan to foster entrepreneurship and promote innovation. It aims to minimize the regulator burden and provide support to start-ups,’’ Mr. Modi had told the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in November last.

Referring to his government’s MUDRA scheme to provide easy finance of up to Rs. One million to entrepreneurs, Mr. Modi pointed out that more than 70 million loans have been sanction to women entrepreneurs alone.

State governments today are having to rely on, promote and foster an enabling environment, which has at its fundamental roots common social values. India’s mosaic of cultures, languages, beliefs and customs are already testimony to its historical ability to co-mingle. Yet amidst India’s economic transformation, explosion of entrepreneurial talent and growth MSMEs in the coming decades, cities and towns that exemplify all of this shall undoubtedly prosper as future centres of success.  

Bengaluru in Karnataka is an interesting example of a city which has offered an enabling environment to attract the most innovative start-ups as well as global giants investing in the State. Besides offering good infrastructural support to businesses, it is very interesting to see how Karnataka has built an entire cultural reputation around one of India’s most cosmopolitan and forward-looking cities.

In its attempt to establish itself as a world-class city, known today as India’s Silicon Valley as it is home to some of the world’s best known IT and software companies, Bengaluru has taken many positive steps to build its cultural reputation of being modern, global and energetic. As a city where professionals from across India and the world work and live, Bengaluru has also provided its residents with a modern and world-quality lifestyle. Its leisure and entertainment environment includes India’s first microbreweries, which have revolutionized  pub culture in the country.

India’s traditional tier one centres have catered to and cultivated start-ups across the e-commerce, technology, logistics, payments and retail spaces, and they shall continue to do so. Beyond their borders, however, regional start-ups are carving out their own niches. This is aided by state government initiatives, the availability of local high net-worth individual investors, talent and a supportive business ecosystem.

Start-ups in India, thriving on digitalisation, a millennial workforce and unbridled ambitions, are all searching for the ideal location. Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai have long led the start-up scene as India’s locations of preference and with good reason. Combined, they funnelled almost US$12.2 billion into start-ups in the first half of 2017 alone. Start-ups located there have also benefited from a strong pool of experienced and fresh talent. Yet smaller cities across India are also beginning to find their feet, and their start-ups. And it’s not just all about the money.

State governments today are having to rely on, promote and foster an enabling environment, which has at its fundamental roots common social values coupled with tolerance and respect. India’s mosaic of cultures, languages, beliefs and customs are already testimony to its historical ability to co-mingle. Yet amidst India’s economic transformation, explosion of entrepreneurial talent and growth MSMEs in the coming decades, cities and towns that exemplify all of this shall undoubtedly prosper as future centres of success.  

Addressing the second International Technology Summit last year, Union IT and Electronics, Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had pointed out that India has emerged as the third biggest start-up movement in the world and the best young brains were now creating jobs through start-ups.

Amitabh Kant, CEO of Niti Aayog, said that India was looking for  great mentors who can actually join hands to transform India. “The key to transforming India is if private and public sectors can work together,’’ he said while speaking to IIM alumni last year.

An enabling environment to attract innovative start-ups as well as getting investments from global giants are key pre-requisites for Start-up programme. Bengaluru in Karnataka has emerged as an interesting example of a city which offers good infrastructural support to businesses. It is interesting to see how Karnataka has built an entire cultural reputation around Bengaluru, one of India’s most cosmopolitan and forward-looking cities. This includes its openness around bar and pub culture, vibrant nightlife, shopping, cinemas et al.

In its attempt to establish itself as a world-class city, known today as India’s Silicon Valley as it is home to some of the world’s best known IT and software companies, Bengaluru has taken many positive steps to build its cultural reputation of being modern, global and energetic. As a city where professionals from across India and the world work and live, Bengaluru has also provided its residents with a modern and world-quality lifestyle. Its leisure and entertainment environment includes India’s first microbreweries, which have revolutionized  pub culture in the country.

India’s traditional tier one centres have catered to and cultivated start-ups across the e-commerce, technology, logistics, payments and retail spaces, and they shall continue to do so. Beyond their borders, however, regional start-ups are carving out their own niches. This is aided by state government initiatives, the availability of local high net-worth individual investors, talent and a supportive business ecosystem.

What will perhaps enable the most conducive environment for these ecosystems to grow will be the social and cultural openness of cities like Jaipur, Pune, Chennai and Vizag which are making their mark in fintech, SaaS, agritech and deep tech. Local issues and social impact initiatives are also finding fertile ground and government support. Chhattisgarh governmnent’s ‘Start-up Chhattisgarh’ programme  logged over 3,500 ideas last year to address local issues. It is just one example of how nearly two-thirds of all incubators in India are now in tier two and three cities.

The drive India is witness to from these once distant centres is not simply a matter of policy, space and money, however. Trends once ascribed to the millennial workforce are growing ever more cross-generational and pervasive. Across the spectrum, India is seeing a migration to resource access, not ownership (think Uber and Ola). Environmental awareness is growing, as is the importance given to well-being and social impact. It is, in a positive sense, the rise en masse of the motivated individual. 

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Delhi End TB Summit in the Capital on Tuesday to review ongoing efforts and accelerate action to reach 2030 End TB goal.

Building on the momentum being created globally to end tuberculosis, world’s top infectious killer disease, leaders from across the globe are converging here for an End TB Summit.

The summit next week will set the stage for the September 2018 United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB. For the first time TB will be discussed in the UN General Assembly at the Heads of State level. The UN high-level meeting is expected to endorse an ambitious set of goals to put the world on course to ending TB. Till date there have only been five UN high-level meeting devoted to health issues.

 Hosted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, the World Health Organization and the Stop TB Partnership, the Delhi End TB Summit 2018 will be addressed by the WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Mr J P Nadda, and Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, Chair of the Stop TB Partnership. 
 
The health ministers of a number of countries including Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, Peru and Brazil are also expected to participate. 
 
TB was responsible for 1.7 million deaths in 2016, despite most cases being curable. Over 10 million people contract TB every year. WHO South-East Asia Region, which hosts about one-fourth of the global population, shares a disproportionate 46% global TB disease burden. 
 
The Delhi End TB Summit builds on the Delhi Call to Action adopted by Member countries of WHO South-East Asia Region in March 2017, and the WHO Global Ministerial Conference “Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era: A Multisectoral Response,” held in Moscow in November last year.

As part of next week’s summit, health ministers and programme heads from WHO South-East Asia Region will review accelerated efforts being made by countries since the adoption of Delhi Call to Action.  
 
Since then, countries in the Region have beefed up efforts to end TB.  India, which had set a 2025 target, is matching it up with increased funding and efforts to proactively detect and treat patients. Sri Lanka is also aiming at ending TB by 2025, a statement issued by WHO said.

Bhutan is focusing efforts at the sub-national level. Indonesia is moving towards universal use of rapid molecular tests to diagnose and treat missing TB cases. While Thailand has approved a strategic plan to significantly reduce TB incidence, Maldives recently launched its national strategic plan, the statement said. 
 
Stop TB Partnership is continuing its global, regional and country advocacy work in addition to the support offered to country programmes and partners towards a TB free world. 
 
On 14-15 March, the Stop TB Partnership will hold its board meeting, which is being hosted in India after 14 years, demonstrating the country’s resolve to fast-track efforts to end the killer disease. 

NEW DELHI: The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched new guidance on the role tobacco product regulation can play to reduce tobacco demand, save lives and raise revenues for health services to treat tobacco-related disease, in the context of comprehensive tobacco control.

A new guide, “Tobacco product regulation: Building laboratory testing capacity”, and a collection of country approaches to regulation of menthol, presented in the publication titled “Case studies for regulatory approaches to tobacco products – Menthol in tobacco products” were launched at the 2018 World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Cape Town, South Africa.

In a statement issued here, the WHO said many countries have developed advanced policies to reduce the demand for tobacco, which kills over 7 million people annually, but governments can do much more to implement regulations to control tobacco use, especially by exploiting tobacco product regulation.

Dr Douglas Bettcher, WHO’s Director of the Department for the Prevention and Control of Non Communicable diseases (NCDs), said “The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), a global treaty established under the auspices of the WHO to combat the tobacco epidemic, has played a critical role in tobacco control. The launch of these important publications will further aid the implementation of Articles 9 and 10 of the WHO FCTC, contributing to building tobacco product regulation capacity in WHO Member States”.

He further said “Tobacco product regulation is an under-utilized tool which has a critical role to play in reducing tobacco use. The tobacco industry has enjoyed years of little or no regulation, mainly due to the complexity of tobacco product regulation and lack of appropriate guidance in this area. These new tools provide a useful resource to countries to either introduce or improve existing tobacco product regulation provisions and end the tobacco industry ‘reign’.”

Most countries hesitate to implement policies, due in part to the highly technical nature of such policy interventions and the difficulties in translating science into regulation, explains Dr Vinayak Prasad, who leads WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.

“Failure to regulate represents a missed opportunity as tobacco product regulation, in the context of comprehensive control, is a valuable tool that complements other tried and tested tobacco control interventions, such as raising taxes, and ensuring smoke-free environments,” adds Dr Prasad.

“Tobacco product regulation: Building laboratory testing capacity” provides practical, stepwise approaches to implementing tobacco testing. Such guidance is relevant to a wide range of countries in various settings, including those with inadequate resources to establish a testing facility. This laboratory guide is a useful resource for countries, and provides regulators and policymakers with comprehensible information on how to test tobacco products, what products to test, and how to use testing data in a meaningful way to support regulation.

Further, it provides a step-by-step guide to developing a testing laboratory, using an existing internal laboratory, contracting an external laboratory, and making use of the available support mechanisms both within WHO and externally. This calls for country prioritization and commitment of resources to tobacco product regulation, as the guide equips regulators with the necessary tools to strengthen tobacco regulation capacity, especially in relation to Article 9 of the WHO FCTC.

The publication “Case studies for regulatory approaches to tobacco products – Menthol in tobacco products” complements the 2016 advisory note on menthol published by the WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation, which set out the available evidence on prevalence and health effects of menthol in tobacco products, as well as evidence-based conclusions and recommendations for policy-makers and regulators on menthol in its various forms.