Loans

NY, NY, United States (NewsBahn) – Tuberculosis (TB) continues to affect society’s most vulnerable – those who live in abject poverty, are marginalized or economically and socially isolated.

The poor and vulnerable people are much more likely to suffer from TB due to socioeconomic factors. The poor face significant costs and delays in accessing TB services and treatment outcomes are more likely to be adverse, said Rachael Thomson from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) who was nominated by the TB and poverty sub-working group of Stop TB Partnership to speak at the Biennial Conference of Irish Forum for Global Health (IFGH) held in Maynooth, Ireland (29-30 November 2010). The IFGH meet was organized by IFGH with support from Combat Diseases of Poverty Consortium (CDPC), Irish Aid and National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM).

“In urban Malawi poorer patients face costs six times their monthly income to access a diagnosis from ‘free’ facilities, and in rural Malawi this cost rises to ten times” said Rachael.

New TB case detection in many countries is low because the poor people are least likely to access TB care services. The process of accessing care is impoverishing making the people accessing care even poorer, said Rachael.

The lack of adequate diagnosis, treatment and cure means the burden of TB in poorer communities continues to increase.

Not surprisingly, the poor people have higher risk of infection, higher prevalence of disease and worse outcome of disease too. Moreover the poor people have greater health care needs, said Rachael.

Social and economic determinants at individual, household and community levels affect a person’s vulnerability to TB.

Special situations such as massive population movements – the displacement of people and refugee flows – and living or working in vulnerable conditions also increase the risk of a person contracting TB. In developed countries, ethnic minorities and other marginalized communities are at a greater risk of contracting the disease.

There is a need to combat TB by addressing the barriers faced due to poverty such as infrastructural, housing, employment, educational and nutritional deficiencies.

Rachael explained that poverty is more than economic poverty (living on less than USD 1.25 per day) and encompasses lack of opportunities, voice and representation, and is a major determinant of vulnerability to disease – especially TB.

One of the major steps forward in addressing poverty and TB will be to put health on the poverty agenda and poverty on the health agenda, said Rachael.

Rachael gave an overview of the TB and poverty sub-group of the Stop TB Partnership. TB and poverty is the sub-group of the DOTS Expansion Working Group (DEWG) of the Stop TB Partnership and is a network of individuals and organisations interested in the needs of poor and vulnerable populations with respect to TB. Since September 2010, the secretariat of the TB and Poverty sub-working group of the Stop TB Partnership is housed in the south-east Asia regional office of The Union in New Delhi, India.

A two-days consultative workshop of the TB and poverty sub-working group was also held in Gurgaon, India on 29-30 October 2010 which brought together the national TB programme managers from India, Nepal and Thailand, state TB officers from eight poorest states of India, and partners from various other organizations like WHO, the World Bank, World Vision, GFATM Round 9 members, media (CNS, Asia Tribune), National Partnership for TB care and control in India among others, said Rachael.

Bobby Ramakant – CNS

(The author is the Director of CNS Stop-TB Initiative and a World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General’s WNTD Awardee (2008).

View full post on Social Issue Stories

New Delhi, India (AHN) – The Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked all the Indian airlines to make their airfares public by putting up the relevant information on their respective websites. The airlines have been given a 48-hour deadline to comply with this instruction. The Government wants to ensure transparency in ticket prices because of the fact that the flyers have constantly complained that they feel cheated because of exorbitant prices.

Earlier, in November, the DGCA had also asked the airlines to provide it with a copy of the route-wise established tariff on the first day of the calendar month.

Top officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA held a meeting with the representatives of the major Indian carriers and issued this directive afterwards. On Monday, the government officials met the representatives of full-service airlines like the Air India (the national carrier), Jet Airways and Kingfisher. On Saturday, they met the no-frill carriers like the IndiGo, Spicejet and GoAir.

During the meetings, the airlines were made aware of the provisions under the Rule number 135 of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, which talks of making the tariff public through either websites or daily newspapers.

The meetings and the directive came as a result of the stand-off between the government and the airlines over the latter’s intentions to raise prices further, which the government is opposed to. This was visible in the recent surge in airfares, especially since November 15 this year, despite continuous government instructions to the contrary. It was in the month of November that the airlines actually went ahead with a 200-300 percent hike in fares.

As per the directive, the domestic airlines will have to “upload the route wise tariff across its network in various fare categories commensurate with date of purchase on their respective websites…” The guidelines are expected to help ensure transparency in the tariff structure of the carriers besides allowing the flyers to “enable predictability” while embarking on an air journey.

According to the directive, the airlines have to communicate detail-wise and route-wise fares, besides informing the public of the details involved in each “fare bucket.” Fare buckets are the different categories into which the aircraft seats are divided, depending upon their price.

On their part, the airlines have reluctantly agreed to comply with this directive, though many among them grudge that doing so would take away the competitive edge among themselves.

Meanwhile, Chairman of one of the major carriers, the Kingfisher airlines, Vijay Mallya said during a recent event, “There is no case of capping airfares in a liberalized environment, be it at the upper or lower band. It is a function of demand and supply and there is no exploitation by airlines.”

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

New Delhi, India (AHN) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh witnessed on Monday the signing of a nuclear reactor purchase deal between two nuclear power firms from both countries.

Under the deal, the French state-controlled nuclear group Areva will supply India’s Nuclear Power Corporation with additional nuclear reactors worth $10 billion. The reactors will be built at Jaitapur in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

The Nuclear Power Corp. already operates 22 nuclear power stations but it is seeking to expand its domestic operation and open up a market estimated at £90bn over 15 years.

Sarkozy was in a four-day visit to India with his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Also with him are his defense, foreign and finance ministers as well as about 60 business leaders.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

LONDON – U.S. President Barack Obama made a splash in India recently when he indicated that the United States would back India’s bid for a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security C…

View full post on All Stories

Mumbai, India (AHN) – India is set to gate-crash into the exclusive three-member club of nuclear triads by 2012 with its first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, which is to be commissioned in either late 2011 or early 2012. Arihant means “destroyer of enemies” in the Hindi language.

Only three countries in the world currently have a complete nuclear weapon triad, which means the capability to fire nuclear-tipped missiles from land, air and sea. These countries are the US, Russia and China.

Indian Navy chief Adm. Nirmal Verma announced Thursday that the country’s crucial underwater leg of nuclear capability would be the third arm of the country’s nuclear defense, which is presently made up of road and rail-mobile ballistic missiles as well as fighter jets such as Mirage 2000s and Sukhoi-30 MKIs, all of which are able to deliver nuclear weapons.

Speaking ahead of the forthcoming Navy Day on Saturday, Verma said, “When INS Arihant goes to sea, it will be on a deterrent patrol. The triad will then be in place… the aim is to make it as effective as possible.”

The INS Arihant was launched in Vizag in July 2009. After it is commissioned, it will possess potent SLBM capabilities, which would complete India’s nuclear triad and bolster its position among the nuclear power club.

Speaking on this development, sources within the Navy said that Arihant remained a top secret project until its launch last year. It is first of three nuclear-powered submarines that India is currently building with help from Russia.

Clarifying India’s stand on nuclear deterrence, Verma also said, “We have a declared policy of no-first-use, but we have Arihant. We have a triad in place now, but we have to use it as effectively as possible. We have Arihant going within two years and there is progress in the project, despite some hiccups. We will be within time and commission the vessel by 2012.”

View full post on Politics Stories

Dhaka, Bangladesh (AHN) – India and Bangladesh have signed an important multi-modal transit deal which will allow New Delhi to supply Tripura, a landlocked north-eastern Indian state.

A crucial transshipment deal was signed by India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) senior adviser R. K. Madan and Bangladesh’s Roads & Highways chief engineer Azizur Rahman on Tuesday. After this deal, India will be able to ship heavy equipment through 96 consignments for the proposed Palatana Power Plant in Tripura.

According to an official associated with the decision, India will be shipping the consignments in 30 ferries and trucks, while the Tripura Power Company will pay a service charge to Bangladesh. However, India is not required to pay any other charges to Bangladesh, said the Bangladeshi Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan at the signing ceremony.

Another official informed that after the equipment reaches Ashuganj, the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) would carry out the weighing and unloading of the goods and then carry it forward to its frontier post at Sultanpur, which is adjoining Tripura. From here the goods will make the final leg of their journey.

Bangladesh Shipping Secretary Abdul Mannan told the press after the signing ceremony that the Indian equipment would begin to reach Bangladesh’s Ashuganj river port from where the same would be transported to Tripura in trucks.

It was six months ago that the two countries had signed an agreement to declare Ashuganj their new “port of call” to carry further a decision taken earlier than that during the India visit of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Now Ashuganj is the second transshipment point and fifth port of call in Bangladesh while New Delhi has extended a similar favor to Bangladesh through its Shilghat port.

Speaking during the signing ceremony, Bangladesh’s shipping minister said, “Bangladesh will recall ever particularly the support of the people of Tripura to our 1971 Liberation War…”

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

Dubai, United Arab Emirates Michael Grubb – Dubai International Airport, the largest in the Gulf, is outpacing the world aviation industry’s recovery this year as it capitalizes on its role as a pivot for business travelers arbitraging between a struggling Europe and the burgeoning economies of Asia. But analysts warn that Dubai’s success makes it a likely magnet for new competition.

Traffic through Dubai International rose by close to 16 percent in the first nine months of the year, well ahead of the 12.9 percent average increase in the Asia-Pacific market, making it the world’s fastest growing, according to Airports Council International. The pace of growth for Dubai continued in October, when traffic exceeded 4 million people for the second time ever, Dubai Airports reported Wednesday.

Aviation is a big and thriving business for tiny Dubai, whose economy is otherwise struggling with some $100 billion of real estate debt. Dubai is home to the world’s 14th busiest airport, just behind New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and ahead of Amsterdam’s Schiphol. The number of people passing through the airport in October alone was equal to more than twice the country’s entire population.

Dubai Airports has ambitious plans for expanding. Annual capacity at Dubai International will grow from 60 million passengers to 75 million next year when it dedicates Concourse 3, the world’s only facility dedicated to servicing the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world.

Meanwhile, a second airport, the Al-Maktoum International, is under development next door. Al-Maktoum began cargo operations six months ago and will be opening for passenger travel in March 2011.

Dubai Airports is expecting growth to continue at a strong double-digit rate in 2011, with annual passenger traffic jumping 13.1 percent to 52.2 million from a forecast 46.1 million for all of 2010. Dubai’s flag carrier Emirates is counting on its passenger numbers growing 10 percent next year while the discount carrier Flydubai forecasts its traffic doubling.

“Before the end of the decade passenger numbers will approach 90 million making Dubai International the busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, said last week.

But Dubai’s airports – and its airlines — are vulnerable to emerging competition because it is entirely dependent on funneling passengers from Europe and Asia through its airports and sending them on to their final destinations, he said. The airport has no domestic market and a tiny regional one. Indeed, measured by international traffic alone, Dubai rises in the world airport rankings to No. 6.

“They will have competition, the dynamics will definitely change,” Philip Butterworth-Hayes, lead consultant of the aviation advisory firm PMi Media, told The Media Line. “I would look at Indian airlines in particular. Once you have a strong home market like India, you have the ability to capture traffic.”

Dubai has not only benefited from huge investment in its airport and carriers but also from low costs, the absence of environmental constraints to airport expansion and its strategic location. Demand for Europe-Asian travel has grown as European companies focus sales on the growing economies of China and the rest of Asia while newly wealthy Asians have the disposable income to travel to Europe for holidays. Dubai is about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) from London and 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Shanghai.

Adding to world-class airports, Dubai’s state-owned Emirates airlines has been an aggressive competitor, taking market share from hobbled European rivals by adding capacity – the airline has the biggest fleet of the giant A380s on order – and is keeping fares and costs low.

But India could match many of these assets. Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital is about 7,200 kilometers (4,500 miles) from London and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from Shanghai, on top of being a business and tourism destination in its own right.

As India’s economy grows, demand for domestic air travel for its 1 billion people has also increased. Domestic air traffic in India grew 15 percent in October compared with a year ago to 4.6 million passengers, the government said last week. What the country still lacks to take on Dubai is a competitive airline to service an Indian hub, Griffiths said.

“If you were to have an Emirates-like operation in India, you could make it a major hub,” he said. “But they would also benefit from the presence of a huge domestic market.”

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

Muzaffarnagar, India (AHN) – Council members in a northern Indian state have banned unmarried women from carrying mobile telephones. The measure was enacted to put an end to number of inter-caste illicit romances.

The Baliyan council in Uttar Pradesh state decided to act following news that dozens of young couples eloped against their parents’ wishes over the last year.

Local women’s rights groups criticized the measure as backwards and unfair.

The decrees of inter-caste marriages are complicated and adherence remains extremely rigid in many rural communities in India. Some lovers have been murdered in “honor killings” in an effort to protect a family’s reputation.

According to police 34 couples eloped last month in Muzaffarnagar district, where Uttar Pradesh state. The elopements led to eight honor killings.

“All parents were told to ensure their unmarried daughters do not use cell phones. The boys can do so, but only under their parents’ monitoring,” said Satish Tyagi, a spokesman for the village assembly.

Caste discrimination is banned in India however it is still thoroughly ingrained in many areas of of daily life, especially outside the country’s largest cities. Caste categories in Hindu society are broken down as follows, brahmins (priests and scholars), kshatriya (soldiers), vaishya (merchants) and shudra (labourers).

Followed underneath the caste system are the Dalits, formerly known as “Untouchables”.

Conservative families typically only marry within their own caste sub-division.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The White House on Friday for second year in a row hosted an event to mark Guru Nanak’s Birth Anniversary which was observed around the world on Sunday.

President Barack Obama, himself away at the NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal issued a statement recognizing Sikhism as a humanistic, egalitarian, and a faith that enshrines the concept of service to others.

Sending his “best wishes to all those observing this extraordinary occasion,” President Obama noted, “Sikhism’s principles of equality, service, interfaith cooperation and respect are principles shared by all Americans.”

“As Sikhs celebrate the birth of Guru Nanak, people of good will everywhere can identify with his teachings on the equality of all humankind and the need for compassion in our service to others,” said the president.

“This is also an opportunity to recognize the many contributions that Sikh Americans have made to our nation, and to reflect on the pluralism that is a hallmark of America,” Obama added in his message to the Sikh community.

Senior officials led by Christina M. Tchen, head of the White House office of Public Engagement, welcomed the guests saying, “President Obama has deep regards for the Sikh community and we are eager to work with you all.”

The program featured traditional kirtan (hymn singing) by Nirmal Singh Nagpuri, Sukhjeevan Singh and Sucha Singh of the Golden Temple, Amritsar, India.

Bandana Kaur Malik, Program Director of EcoSikh, spoke on Guru Nanak’s philosophy of equality, humility and service while Karandeep Singh from Pennsylvania addressed Guru Nanak’s perspective of building society with respect and acceptance of all faiths and groups.

On behalf of the Sikh community, the Kaur Foundation welcomed President Obama’s greetings to all Sikhs on the joyous occasion of the Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, saying, “The Kaur Foundation focuses on promoting a progressive understanding and acceptance of diversity.”

Expressing delight on the celebrations held in the White House, the Kaur Foundation said it looked forward “to opportunities of working with the White House and the President to help promote respect and universal brotherhood.”

“We will convey President Obama’s greetings to our congregation and look forward to working with the President to help promote equality for all Americans,” said the Guru Nanak Foundation of America.

United Sikhs, a global humanitarian organization in a statement said, “We hope the President and the administration will continue to highlight the contributions but also the challenges the Sikh community faces in the current environment.”

The Sikh Council on Religion and Education (SCORE) added in a statement, “This is once again an acknowledgement of Sikh community’s vibrant presence in America.”

Sikhs and Obama were recently in media spotlight before the presidential visit to India.

The media reports had alleged that the president cancelled his visit to the holy Sikh shrine Golden Temple, Amritsar in the northern Indian state of Punjab amid fears of being branded a Muslim as he had to cover his head while visiting the interior of the shrine.

View full post on Politics Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Indian diaspora on the East coast was treated to a visual display of real estate investment opportunities at a gala dinner featuring finished and planned projects by New York based Ireo on Saturday in Vienna, Virginia.

“If you are interested in real estate space in India, be it for yourself – your family – or simply an investment, there is no better place to put your money then with Ireo,” Vijay Amritraj, international tennis legend and former United Nations Ambassador told AHN on the sidelines of the glittering show.

Answering, “Why should I mess (read: invest) in India – when I live here?” the core question of Indian Americans settled in the United States, Anjali Grover, of Ireo, told the select audience of rich and famous gathered at the “Bombay Tandoor Restaurant,” that the projects, some of which are completed, some are in the building stage while others are on the architects’ drawing tables, are all on par with the American standards in quality and safety.

Sitting in the United States, the investor can use easy means to invest and own or sell later with Ireo providing personalized services all the way, she added.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories