Month-long awareness programme on malaria commences in Visakhapatnam
The Hindu
Stagnation of water should be prevented, say officials
District Medical and Health Officer K. Vijayalakshmi said that the month of June is being observed as ‘Malaria Prevention Month’ through awareness drives to control the proliferation of mosquitoes.
Rajya Sabha MP Suresh Prabhu and Collector A. Mallikarjuna flagged off an awareness rally from the Collectorate on Wednesday to mark the commencement of the month-long programme.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Vijayalakshmi said that the objective of the programme was to educate people on the need to ensure that there was no stagnation of water, which facilitates the breeding of mosquitoes and in turn the spread of the disease. She underlined the importance of community participation in checking the spread of malaria.
MLC P.V.N. Madhav, District Malaria Officer Y. Mani and GVMC Zonal Commissioner Ramana Murthy were present.
The rally proceeded from Collectorate to Mrs. AVN College.
“Writing, in general, is a very solitary process,” says Yauvanika Chopra, Associate Director at The New India Foundation (NIF), which, earlier this year, announced the 12th edition of its NIF Book Fellowships for research and scholarship about Indian history after Independence. While authors, in general, are built for it, it can still get very lonely, says Chopra, pointing out that the fellowship’s community support is as valuable as the monetary benefits it offers. “There is a solid community of NIF fellows, trustees, language experts, jury members, all of whom are incredibly competent,” she says. “They really help make authors feel supported from manuscript to publication, so you never feel like you’re struggling through isolation.”
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.