1. Mission Indradanush 2.0
- Centre is launching nationwide vaccination drive to prevent eight diseases under Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 across the country today.
- The government’s flagship scheme is aimed at immunizing children under the age of 2 years and pregnant women against eight vaccine preventable diseases.
- The IMI covers vaccines for diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, measles, meningitis and Hepatitis B. Vaccines for Japanese Encephalitis and Hemophilus influenza are also being provided in selected areas.
- The IMI 2.0 aims to achieve targets of full immunization coverage in 272 districts spread over 27 States. The IMI 2.0 will be carried out between December 2019 and March 2020.
- The campaign will be carried out in 260 development blocks of 43 districts of the state including the capital Bhopal and Indore. In addition, the mission will be running in four-phases in state. Children will be vaccinated under the National Mission Indradhanush in the months in January , February and March next year.
2. Governmet to list single use plastic
- The Centre is likely to identify as many as eight articles as ‘single-use plastic’ items that will be discontinued on a priority basis, including plastic cutlery, plastic bags and certain Styrofoam items.
- Defining single-use plastic is the first step in the direction of doing away with such products in India by 2022, as called for by Prime Minister NarendraModi during his Independence Day address.
- While many states have banned plastic, there are wide variations in implementation and the range of products covered.After consulting stakeholders, the environment ministry is close to announcing a clear and uniform definition of single-use plastic.
- The idea is to completely phase out single-use plastic where it is replaceable with environment friendly alternatives and to bring in a robust segregation, collection and disposal mechanism for single-use plastic.
- The ministry wrote to the states in September asking them to curb production of plastic bags, irrespective of thickness and size, and Styrofoam (thermocol) cutlery and to encourage manufacturers and consumers to shift to other environmentally friendly material.
- Every village will be asked to start waste segregation. They will send plastic waste to block-level units that will convert the aggregated waste into bales, shred them and transport them to aggregators for recycling to build in a sustainable mechanism.
3. INSTEX system
- A trade mechanism ‘Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX)’ was established by France, Germany and the United Kingdom in January 2019 to allow European entities to maintain trade with Iran.
- The mechanism has been designed to circumvent U.S. sanctions against trade with Iran by avoiding the use of the dollar.
- The United States imposed sanctions, after it withdrew from Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018.
- This Paris-based mechanism functions as a clearing house allowing Iran to continue to sell oil and import other products or services in exchange.
- The mechanism represents continuing commitment of France, Germany and the UK to the JCPOA.
- It has been seen that the system has not yet enabled any transactions.
4. World Aids day
- The World AIDS Day is observed on 1st December every year all over the world.
- Founded in 1988, World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day.
- The main motto behind celebrating the day is to raise public awareness about AIDS.
- Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), is a pandemic disease caused due to the infection of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes damage to the immune system.
- The theme for the year 2019 is ‘Communities make the difference’.