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@Noon: 💉🚆India's Landmark Firsts With Vaccine And Train
1. đź’‰India's own cervical cancer vaccine
India's first cervical cancer shot is here.
The indigenously developed vaccine should be able to strike against most prevalent cervical cancers.
Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among Indian women.
According to WHO, there are around 1.23 lakh new cases of cervical cancer annually in India and approximately 67,000 fatalities.
This translates to a fifth of the global burden of cervical cancer.
The vaccine hits where it hurts. The majority of cervical cancer cases are caused by different strains of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection.
India's vaccine is effective against strains 16 and 18 of HPV, the two types that account for 70 per cent of all cervical cancers worldwide.
The vaccine, Ceravac, will be rolled out by the Serum Institute of India and the Government of India’s Department of Biotechnology.
The cost. At just Rs 200-400 per dose, Ceravac will be far more affordable than the cervical cancer vaccines currently available in India.
The existing vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix, cost Rs 3,927 and Rs 2,640 for one vial respectively.
How to roll out the vaccine: There are several channels through which Ceravac can be delivered.
It can be integrated with the national immunisation programme.
There's also the school health programme, which reaches out to large numbers of children and adolescents.
The vaccine can be integrated with the cervical cancer screening initiative being undertaken at health and wellness centres.
Eventually the vaccine can also be rolled out in partnership with the private sector.
Not just for the girls. While the cervical cancer vaccine programme will be focused on girls, in due course, vaccination of boys could also be considered as boys can be carriers of HPV.
Bottom line: Ceravac, if rolled out at scale, can save the lives of a large number of girls and women and also preserve their quality of life.
2. 🚆India's first hydrogen-powered train
India will launch its first hydrogen-powered train by the next Independence Day.
The train will be designed, developed, and manufactured in the country.
The world’s first hydrogen-powered train was rolled out in Germany only last month.
Hydrogen gas is a clean energy source.
Quote. “India has been able to build trains which are among the best in the world and the next big thing will be when the hydrogen-powered train is rolled out on August 15, 2023,” the Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said.
Better trains. Generally speaking, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked engineers to build world-class trains which should be safe, stable, and consume less energy besides running at a good speed, the Minister said.
3. 🪖New venue for Army Day parade
The next Army Day parade will be held outside of the national capital.
The parade is held annually in Delhi on 15 January, but this is set to change.
Next year’s Army Day parade will be held in the area under the Southern Command, reports say, quoting Indian Army officials.
The Southern Command HQ is Pune, Maharashtra.
India will celebrate its 75th Army Day in 2023.
What's the Army Day? It commemorates the day when General (later Field Marshal) K M Cariappa took over the command of the force from the last British commander-in-chief, General Sir Francis Robert Roy Bucher.
PM Modi's vision. This move out of Delhi for the Army Day parade is keeping with the Prime Minister's directive to take major events out of the national capital and to other parts of the country.
Earlier, the Indian Air Force Day flypast and parade, which is held every year on 8 October at the Hindon air base near Delhi, was taken out of the capital. It will be held in Chandigarh this year.
Going back even further, the Combined Commanders Conference, where the Prime Minister delivers an address, had moved out of Delhi after 2014.
The Army Day parade venue will change every year too.
4. đź’łUPI, RuPay in Saudi Arabia?
India and Saudi Arabia discussed rupee-riyal trade and possible introduction of UPI and RuPay cards in the gulf kingdom.
What was discussed: The diversification and expansion of trade and commerce, removal of trade barriers, including a number of outstanding issues, and trade remedies.
The discussion took place in a meeting between Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Majid bin Abdullah Al-Kassabi.
Goyal was in Saudi Arabia on 18, 19 September to attend the ministerial meeting of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council.
Both countries reaffirmed continued cooperation in joint projects including the west coast refinery, LNG infrastructure investment, and development of strategic petroleum storage facilities in India.
5. 🦠Lab leak origin for Covid-19, and in the US too?
Top medical journal has said that “laboratory-related escape” is one of two leading hypotheses for SARS-CoV-2 origin.
The other leading hypothesis, of course, is that the virus emerged as a natural, zoonotic spillover from wildlife or a farm animal.
“...both the pathways of natural transmission and of research-related transmission are feasible,” the international expert panel said.
The search for the origin thus far has remained incomplete and inconclusive, according to the report by the Lancet Covid-19 Commission.
Curiously!... US involvement? The report says that the eventual discovery of a natural reservoir of the virus might occur “quite possibly outside of China.”
The US, in particular, was under special scrutiny by the Commission.
The report took aim at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), saying it “has resisted disclosing details” of the virus research it has been supporting.
Commission Chair Professor Jeffrey Sachs has previously expressed on a number occasions his view that the virus "came out of a US lab biotechnology, not out of nature."
Now what? The panel is recommending intensification of the search for the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
This involves “investigating both a possible zoonotic origin and a possible research-associated origin.”
Identifying the origin of the virus will help to prevent future pandemics, the Sachs-led panel said in its report.
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