Traditional Medicines
- Ministry of AYUSH hosted World Health Organization meeting on developing Standardized Terminologies and Benchmarks documents for Practice for Traditional Medicine.
- WHO is developing Benchmarks Document for Practice of Ayurveda, Panchakarma & Unani and International Terminologies Documents in Ayurveda, Siddha & Unani.
- Development of these benchmarks documents is included in the Project Collaboration Agreement (PCA) signed between World Health Organization (WHO) and Ministry of AYUSH on Cooperation in the field of Traditional and Complementary Medicine under WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023.
The WHO Traditional Medicine (TM) Strategy 2014–2023 was developed in response to the World Health Assembly resolution on traditional medicine . The goals of the strategy are to support Member States in:
- harnessing the potential contribution of TM to health, wellness and peoplecentred health care;
- promoting the safe and effective use of TM by regulating, researching and integrating TM products, practitioners and practice into health systems, where appropriate.
AYUSH
AYUSH stands for:
- Ayurveda
- Yoga
- Naturopathy
- Unani
- Siddha
- Homoeopathy
Sidhha Medicines
- Siddha medicine is a system of traditional medicine originating in ancient Tamilakam (Tamil Nadu) in South India and Sri Lanka.
- Traditionally, it is taught that the siddhars laid the foundation for this system of medication.
- Siddhars were spiritual adepts who possessed the ashta siddhis, or the eight supernatural powers.
- Agastyar is considered the first siddha and the guru of all siddhars; the siddha system is believed to have been handed over to him by Shiva.
- Siddha is focused on “Ashtamahasiddhi,” the eight supernatural power. Those who attained or achieved these powers are known as Siddhars.
- There were 18 important Siddhars in olden days and they developed this system of medicine.
- The Siddhars wrote their knowledge in palm leaf manuscripts, fragments of which were found in parts of South India.
Sowa-Rigpa
- “Sowa-Rigpa” commonly known as Tibetan system of medicine is one of the oldest, Living and well documented medical tradition of the world.
- It has been originated from Tibet and popularly practised in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia and Russia.
- In India, this system is widely practised in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Darjeeling (West Bengal), Dharamsala, Lahaul and Spiti(Himachal Pradesh) and Ladakh region of Jammu & Kashmir.
Unani
Unani System of Medicine was introduced in India by the Arabs and Persians around the eleventh century. Involving the use of herbal remedies, dietary practices, and alternative therapies, Unani medicine addresses the prevention and treatment of disease.
Vaccine Hesitancy
As per WHO, Vaccine Hesitancy is defined as “reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines” and is influenced by factors such as complacency, convenience and confidence.
Personal Data Protection Bill- 2019
Introduced in the Lok Sabha.
The B N Srikrishna committee draft had required all fiduciaries to store a copy of all personal data in India. The Bill trifurcates the data into three categories and mandates the storage within India’s boundaries depending upon the type of data.
Key provisions
The Bill trifurcates data as follows:
- Personal data: Data from which an individual can be identified like name, address etc..
- Sensitive personal data (SPD): Some types of personal data like as financial, health, sexual orientation, biometric, genetic, transgender status, caste, religious belief, and more.
- Critical personal data: Anything that the government at any time can deem critical, such as military or national security data.
The Bill removes the requirement of data mirroring (in case of personal data). Only individual consent for data transfer abroad is required.
- Data mirroring: The act of copying data from one location to a storage device in real time.
Personal Data: The Bill requires sensitive personal data to be stored only in India. It can be processed abroad only under certain conditions including approval of a Data Protection Agency (DPA).
Critical Personal Data: Critical personal data must be stored and processed in India.
Non Personal Data: The Bill mandates fiduciaries to provide the government any non-personal data when demanded.
- Non-personal data refers to anonymised data, such as traffic patterns or demographic data.
- The previous draft did not apply to this type of data, which many companies use to fund their business model.
The Bill also requires social media companies, which are deemed significant data fiduciaries based on factors such as volume and sensitivity of data, to develop their own user verification mechanism.
- This intends to decrease the anonymity of users and prevent trolling.
Other Important Provisions
- The Bill includes exemptions for processing data without an individual’s consent for “reasonable purposes”, including security of the state, detection of any unlawful activity or fraud, whistleblowing, medical emergencies, credit scoring, operation of search engines and processing of publicly available data.
- The Bill calls for the creation of an independent regulator Data Protection Authority, which will oversee assessments and audits and definition making.
- Each company will have a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who will liaison with the DPA for auditing, grievance redressal, recording maintenance and more.
- The Bill proposes “Purpose limitation” and “Collection limitation” clause, which limit the collection of data to what is needed for “clear, specific, and lawful” purposes.
- It also grants individuals the right to data portability and the ability to access and transfer one’s own data. It also grants individuals the right to data portability, and the ability to access and transfer one’s own data.
- Finally, it legislates on the right to be forgotten. With historical roots in European Union law, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this right allows an individual to remove consent for data collection and disclosure.
- The Bill stated the penalties as: Rs 5 crore or 2 percent of worldwide turnover for minor violations and Rs 15 crore or 4 percent of total worldwide turnover for more serious violations.
- Also, the company’s executive-in-charge can also face jail terms of up to three years.
Related Information
- Pegasus- Many whats app accounts were hacked recently using Israeli software called Pegasus.
- According to the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy judgement (2017), the right to privacy is a fundamental right .
