Health

COVID-19 (novel coronavirus disease), an acute respiratory disease emerged in late 2019 and has been spreading rapidly across the globe. The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It is marked by respiratory problems that are usually mild (coughing, fever) but can be severe (pneumonia, trouble breathing).

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared coronavirus disease a pandemic. Originating from Wuhan in China, it has traversed almost the entire globe, and claimed more than 41,000 lives, while over 8 lakh people are infected already. That’s largely the urban population.

Which industry has seen phenomenal growth since World War II? It is food. People have been encouraged to eat more and more as part of the general consumerist thrust to increase consumption. So, the moment people's incomes have gone up they have begun consuming more food along with other things. The economy can grow only if we consume more. This is why we also have to eat more. Not just in quantity but also in variety. Our plates these days not only have more helpings but they also have more categories of food.

Latur in Maharashtra has been facing acute drinking water scarcity over the last month and has been in news again, and that too, inspite of having piped water connections and a good monsoon this year!

Disasters have the ability to disrupt everyday life. However, it is not often that we probe about what constitutes a disaster? How do we define it? Well, a disaster varies in definition for different agencies. As professionals, we have found various answers to what constitutes a disaster and its typology, based on the severity, nature and frequency of an event. But, we are yet to identify an ideal approach to manage a disaster. The ideal type of management in turn depends on the context of the disaster.

Water insufficiency is a challenging problem globally with 1 in 10 people lacking a basic water pump or covered well close to home. There are currently 98 million people - 7% of the population - in India who do not even have a basic water pump or covered well close to home, which is making it much harder to cope with the growing impacts of climate change.

This month has been seeing a different kind of a scare world over, that of the deadly corona virus pandemic that has been spreading rapidly, infecting people and leading to a rising number of deaths in numerous countries. India too is in the line of fire with the total number of active COVID-2019 cases reaching 223 as on 20th March 2020.

The growing threat of the corona virus

Efforts are underway by both state and central governments to improve access to safe and adequate drinking water to people, and nationally, as on 31 December 2018, 79% of rural habitations had been covered at 40 litres per capita per day (lpcd) but only 47% at 55 lpcd. Yet, in spite of the big push towards piped water supply in rural areas, the coverage continued to be poor.

With the rise in frequency and intensity of unexpected disasters, the need for effective communication technologies such as the use of social and mobile tools seems to be growing for responding to disaster situations in emergency, rescue and relief efforts. COVID-19 has been declared as ‘notified disaster’ by the central government recently in a move it called “a special one-time dispensation”, to contain the spread of the infectious virus.