National
Report of National Health Account Estimates for India for 2017-18
⇒ Shri Rajesh Bhushan, Union Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare released findings of the National Health Accounts (NHA) Estimates for India for 2017-18. This is the fifth consecutive NHA report.
Produced by:
The NHA report has been produced by National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC), designated as National Health Accounts Technical Secretariat (NHATS) in 2014 by the Union Health Ministry.
» The NHA estimates are prepared by using an accounting framework based on internationally accepted System of Health Accounts 2011, provided by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Key findings:
- The NHA estimates for 2017-18 clearly show that there has been an increase in the share of government health expenditure in the total GDP of the country. It has increased from 1.15% in 2013-14 to 1.35% in 2017-18.
- Additionally, the share of Government Health Expenditure in total health expenditure has also increased overtime. In 2017-18, the share of government expenditure was 40.8%, which is much higher than 28.6% in 2013-14.
- The Government’s health expenditure as a share of total Government expenditure has increased from 3.78% to 5.12% between 2013-14 and 2017-18.
- In per capita terms, the government health expenditure has increased from Rs 1042 to Rs.1753 between 2013-14 to 2017-18.
- The share of primary healthcare in current government health expenditure has increased from 51.1% in 2013-14 to 54.7% in 2017-18.
- Out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) as a share of total health expenditure coming down to 48.8% in 2017-18 from 64.2% in 2013-14.
- Per Capita Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) declines from Rs.2336 to Rs.2097 from 2013-14 to 2017-18.
InFinity Forum
⇒ Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated InFinity Forum, a thought leadership Forum on FinTech through video conference on 03 December 2021.
Host:
The event was hosted by International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), under the aegis of Government of India in collaboration with GIFT City and Bloomberg on December 3 and 4, 2021.
- Indonesia, South Africa and the UK were the partner countries in the first edition of the Forum.
Theme:
The agenda of the Forum was focused on the theme of ‘Beyond’.
It included various sub themes:
- FinTech beyond Boundaries, with governments and businesses focussing beyond the geographical boundaries in the development of global stack to promote financial inclusiveness
- FinTech beyond Finance, by having convergence with emerging areas such as SpaceTech, GreenTech and AgriTech to drive sustainable development
- FinTech Beyond Next, with focus on how Quantum Computing could impact the nature of Fintech industry in the future and promote new opportunities
Participation:
InFinity Forum brought together the leading minds of the world in policy, business, and technology to discuss and come up with actionable insight into how technology and innovation can be leveraged by the FinTech industry for inclusive growth and serving humanity at large.
The forum witnessed participation from over 70 countries.
About IFSCA:
The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), headquartered at GIFT City, Gandhinagar Gujarat, has been established under the International Financial Services Centres Authority Act, 2019.
It works as a unified authority for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in India.
National Strategy on Blockchain
⇒ The Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology & Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar released the National Strategy on Blockchain on 3rd December 2021.
Formulated by:
The National Strategy on Blockchain has been formulated by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India.
Aim:
The strategy document aims at creating trusted digital platforms through shared Blockchain infrastructure; promoting research and development, innovation, technology and application development; and facilitating state of the art, transparent, secure and trusted digital service delivery to citizens and businesses, thus making India a global leader in Blockchain Technology.
» This strategy document lays out overall vision towards development and implementation strategies for a National Blockchain Platform covering the technology stack, legal and regulatory framework, standards development, collaboration, human resource development and potential use cases.
About Blockchain:
- Blockchain is an apt technology for e-Governance solutions and other domains, leading towards enabling trust in digital platforms.
- Blockchain provides the required security and privacy, and allows only trusted entities with privileges to record and access details in an accountable manner.
India’s first indigenous Server— RUDRA
The Minister also launched India’s first indigenous Server— RUDRA.
Developed by:
Server RUDRA has been developed by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) supported by MeiTY and DST.
About RUDRA:
- Rudra Server, an outcome of NSM Phase-3 deliverable which aims at Design and Manufacturing of Supercomputers in India, is Secure, Reliable, Dual Socket based on current generation of Intel Xcon scalable processor technology and supports accelerated computing.
- It is a dense form factor server with centralized power supply in half width 1U and 2 U form factors with compute power ranging from 3.6 T1 to 34 IT.
- It is poised to demonstrate India’s competency to design, develop, build and deliver as per nation’s multidisciplinary computing needs, and has critical strategic and national importance.
- The server design can be used for manufacturing classical standalone commercial servers and also as building blocks for building large supercomputing systems of tens of petaflops of computing performance.
- It is aimed at achieving better energy efficiency, density and architectural features to suit requirements of the national mission.
Important Day
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
⇒ International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) is observed every year on December 3.
The day is observed to promote the rights and well-being of people with disabilities at every level of society and development
Theme:
The theme of the IDPD 2021 was ‘Leadership and participation of persons with disabilities toward an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable post-COVID-19 world’.
About IDPD:
- The annual observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons was proclaimed in 1992, by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3.
- The observance of the Day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities.
- It also seeks to increase awareness of gains to be derived from the integration of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.
Awards by GoI:
On the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment confers National Awards on Individuals, Institutions, Organizations, State/District etc.
These awards are given every year for outstanding achievements and work done towards empowerment of persons with disabilities.