Tag: Sodh Patra

  • Government to support disaster survivors: Maoist Chair Prachanda

    Government to support disaster survivors: Maoist Chair Prachanda

    MANANG: CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ has said the government would fully support the landslide and flood-affected people.

    While inspecting the natural disaster-hit areas in the hilly district on Saturday, the former Prime Minister Prachanda shared that the incumbent coalition government was with the disaster survivors. He also said Manang and Sindhupalchowk were the worst-affected districts by the floods and landslides, therefore a practical solution would be sought after proper geological survey.

    He further committed to managing food and shelter for the survivors. The inspection team led by Prachanda comprised Minister for Energy and Irrigation, Pampha Bhushal, and other high level officials.

    The team also inspected Pisang, Chame and Naso Rural Municipalities. Floods in different parts of the district had submerged over 100 houses and causing huge damage a month back. CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’. (File photo)

  • Janakpur-Jayanagar railway track speed to be tested

    Janakpur-Jayanagar railway track speed to be tested

    JANAKPUR: A speed test of the Janakpur-Jayanagar railway track is being carried out today.

    The railway track speed testing and certification is being carried out as part of preparations to run the railway services, said its general manager Guru Bhattarai.

    The track speed test is being carried out by the Diesel Locomotive Rail of India’s east-centre railway.

    Track speed testing is an important process prior to the regular operation of the railway service.

    And since the speed of the railway will be 120 km per hour, security on the railway track will be important, Bhattarai said.

    As a result, sufficient number of police personnel and employees will be mobilized for the testing today.

    A request has also been made to the general public to maintain distance from the railway track, and not leave cattle astray and stop children from wandering around.

    In case of no problem found in course of the testing from Jayanagar to Janakpur and back, the Indian railway company will hand over a certificate to the Nepal Railways Company Limited.

    This will then pave the way for the official opening of the service, after other requirements are fulfilled.

    Two rails purchased by the government at the cost of Rs. 846.5 million from India in a government-to-government process had arrived in Janakpur station in October last year.

    However, it is yet to come into operation and remains idle in the Inarwa station of Janakpur.

  • Nagarik App Update: Vehicle Tax Payment, Info and More

    Nagarik App Update: Vehicle Tax Payment, Info and More

    Nagarik App has recently made an update in its system regarding vehicle tax payment, information. Now the users can update the information of their vehicles for tax purpose.

    This feature was updated on 5th of July, 2021. As you can see, it has added the feature where users can update their vehicle information and tax details. With some performance enhancements and some issues fix, Nagarik app has added this feature so that you won’t need to carry your vehicle documents like driving license and blue book.

    For now, this service is available for Province No. 3 and Bagmati Zone only. This feature will be further expanded for other provinces with time. Here is how you will see the change in the Dashboard.

    Which of the vehicle details can we update?

    With this new feature, we can add the details of our vehicles so that one does not need to carry their vehicle documents each time they go to pay taxes or need to pay fines to the traffic. Simply, the system of Nagarik app forwards the entered details of our vehicles to the respective vehicles tax offices for authorization.

    We can update the details like our vehicle type, lot number, symbol and vehicle number. After that, the system displays a virtual number plate and we can confirm it.

    How to update vehicle details in Nagarik App?

    To update the vehicle details, one should log in to the Nagarik App. Then on the dashboard, click on “Vehicle Tax” option. After that, the following screen appears and you need to add the details like province/zone, vehicle type, lot number, symbol and vehicle number.

  • Govt to purchase 4 million Covid-19 vaccines from China on non-disclosure condition

    Govt to purchase 4 million Covid-19 vaccines from China on non-disclosure condition

    Kathmandu: The government has decided to purchase four million doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the Sinopharm company of China as soon as possible.

    A cabinet meeting held on Monday decided to approve the Health Ministry’s request for the purchase, informs a minister.

    Earlier, the Chinese company had demanded that the purchase be made on a non-disclosure condition–that is the buyer cannot disclose the price elsewhere. Owing to the demand, the Department of Health Services had been unable to forward the process. But, now, without any other alternative, the government has given into the demand, the minister says.

    Existing laws do not allow the non-disclosure agreement. Therefore, the government is working on how this could be sorted out.

    “The prime minister has told the Covid-19 Crisis Management Centre meeting on Wednesday that the first lot of the vaccines will arrive within June,” the minister informs.

    Meanwhile, Oli says efforts are underway to purchase vaccines from other countries also.

  • PM Oli directs to remove legal obstacles to save lives of citizens

    PM Oli directs to remove legal obstacles to save lives of citizens

    KATHMANDU: The Covid-19 Crisis Management Centre (CCMC) has directed the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs to carry out homework for the formulation of few more laws since new laws were necessary to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

    At a special meeting of the CCMC on Sunday, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, directed the ministry and bodies concerned to make necessary preparations since the clauses of the Infectious Disease Act 2020 were not enough to control this pandemic. The meeting took the decision to move ahead by removing exiting legal obstacles for the immediate arrangement of vaccine and oxygen.

    After the meeting, Foreign Affairs Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali shared that the meeting also directed the bodies concerned to work with more enthusiasm for the immediate supply of health supplies, including oxygen and vaccines.

    Saying that the government has made efforts to end the situation of people losing lives for want of oxygen, Minister Gyawali said, “The past two weeks were very difficult for us. It is been believed that such a situation will come down gradually.” The Foreign Minister added that the meeting decided to encourage entrepreneurs to run oxygen industries with full capacity across the nation as the country has been facing shortage of oxygen gas in this hour of pandemic as well as to take diplomatic initiatives and request to bring more liquid oxygen from India.

    Stating that some oxygen cylinders were brought from China and India and some others are being processed, he opined that the government has taken the belief that the problem of oxygen crisis would be removed within few days. The government has analyzed that the figure of the infection rate has reached a peak point, it has been informed.

    On the occasion, PM Oli directed the concerned agencies to do the needful so that people should not lose their lives due to a lack of money and other problems. “Do whatever you need to do to save people’s lives by carrying out work fast and promptly. People’s lives should be saved.”

    The meeting discussed the issue of declaring a health emergency in the country. A study on the matter is underway, said Minister Gyawali. To deal with the crisis effectively, he stressed the need for running hospitals and various health institutions under the Ministry of Health and Population and basic hospitals run by provincial and local levels in an integrated manner.

  • These ‘basic medicines for Covid-19’ shouldn’t be taken without doctor’s advice

    These ‘basic medicines for Covid-19’ shouldn’t be taken without doctor’s advice

    KATHMANDU: As the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic surges across Nepal with an alarming rise in infections and deaths, a huge amount of misinformation about the contagion is circulating on the internet.

    Over the past few days, social media users have been sharing a picture containing blisters of various pills and capsules along with a handwritten list of medicines with a caption that they are some ‘basic medicines for Covid-19’.

    The handwritten ‘Covid tablets’ list, which is circulating on Facebook and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger among others, contains the names of various medicines and recommended daily dosages.

    According to Ramesh Lamichhane, the owner of Samyukta Pharmacy at Manamaiju in Kathmandu, many people have been visiting his pharmacy with the list in order to buy the medicines.

    “Within a span of 3-4 days, about 6-7 people came to me with an identical list of medicines. At first I though some doctor might have prescribed them, but I learnt about its origins later when one of my relatives sent me a picture of the same list saying he found it on Facebook and asked me if the list was reliable,” he said.

    Lamichhane told South Asia Check that after learning about the reality of the list, he has stopped dispensing the medicines to those who come with the list.

    The list includes 7 types of medicines:

    Medicine

    Among these, Zincovit, Limcee and Shelcal are vitamin and mineral supplements while Doxy and Azithral are antibiotics. Similarly, Dolo is a paracetamol and Ivermectin is a medicine for roundworm.

    Although vitamin and mineral supplements may be useful for patients with Covid-19, their effectiveness in such patients still remains unproven.

    An article published by the Harvard Medical School advises using vitamin and mineral supplements as per the prescription and suggestion of a physician.

    The supplements will only help those Covid-19 patients who are infected with vitamin C, D and zinc deficiencies, according to an article in the ScienceNews. “Although complementary medicine is generally safe, it should be used according to the doctor’s advice to avoid infection, said ScienceNews.

    Read this also: A supposed home remedy for boosting blood oxygen levels is unfounded

    The list also includes two antibiotics. According to Healthline, an American health website, “researchers believe antibiotics can do more harm than good if taken incorrectly. They can cause bacteria to become increasingly resistant to treatment, can damage immune cells and can damage the ability of white blood cells to fight infections.”

    The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), warns against unnecessary use of antibiotics saying this can make a person sicker or induce various side effects. It recommends using only the prescribed antibiotics and against using the antibiotics prescribed for others.

    “These drugs can have very bad effects if taken without doctor’s advice,” Dr Arun Upreti, a resident doctor at Kathmandu-based Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, told South Asia Check.

    “On the other hand, if everyone starts taking these medicines arbitrarily then this could cause a shortage in the market and genuine patients could suffer.

    According to Dr Upreti, although it is normal to give these medicines to hospitalized Covid-19 patients under the supervision of doctors, others should not take these medicines without consulting doctors. Source: Khabarhub

     

  • Directs stakeholders for setting up isolation facility at Geta Medical College

    Directs stakeholders for setting up isolation facility at Geta Medical College

    KAILALI: Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supplies Lekhraj Bhatta has directed the officials and stakeholders to forward necessary preparations for making an isolation facility at Kailali-based Geta Medical College.

    After an onsite visit of the college on Monday, Minister Bhatta asked the bodies to ensure necessary facilities like electricity, drinking water and health equipment in the college building for the arrangement of isolation facility.

    Chairperson of the District COVID-19 Crisis Management Centre (DCCMC) and Chief District Officer of Kailali Khagendra Rijal shared plans to make 2000-bed isolation facility along the holding centre at the Geta Hospital and work in this regard would start immediately.

    He added that arrangements would be made to carry out treatment of coronavirus-infected people within a week. The activities would be forwarded in collaboration with Dhangadhi Sub-Metropolitan City and Godawari Municipality in Kailali.

  • Study finds co-workers influence our food choices

    Study finds co-workers influence our food choices

    BOSTON: The findings of a new large study on hospital employees suggest that people in our social networks influence the food we eat, both healthy and unhealthy.

    These findings may help guide efforts to improve population health. The findings of the research were published in the journal titled ‘Nature Human Behaviour’.

    The foods people buy at a workplace cafeteria may not always be chosen to satisfy an individual craving or taste for a particular food. When co-workers are eating together, individuals are more likely to select foods that are as healthy–or unhealthy–as the food selections on their fellow employees’ trays.

    “We found that individuals tend to mirror the food choices of others in their social circles, which may explain one-way obesity spreads through social networks,” said Douglas Levy, PhD, an investigator at the Mongan Institute Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and first author of new research published in Nature Human Behaviour.

    Levy and his co-investigators discovered that individuals’ eating patterns can be shaped even by casual acquaintances, evidence that corroborates several multi-decade observational studies showing the influence of people’s social ties on weight gain, alcohol consumption, and eating behavior.

    Previous research on social influence upon food choice had been primarily limited to highly controlled settings like studies of college students eating a single meal together, making it difficult to generalize findings to other age groups and to real-world environments.

    The study by Levy and his co-authors examined the cumulative social influence of food choices among approximately 6,000 MGH employees of diverse ages and socioeconomic status as they ate at the hospital system’s seven cafeterias over two years.

    The healthfulness of employees’ food purchases was determined using the hospital cafeterias’ “traffic light” labeling system designating all food and beverages as green (healthy), yellow (less healthy), or red (unhealthy).

    MGH employees may use their ID cards to pay at the hospitals’ cafeterias, which allowed the researchers to collect data on individuals’ specific food purchases, and when and where they purchased the food.

    The researchers inferred the participants’ social networks by examining how many minutes apart two people made food purchases, how often those two people ate at the same time over many weeks, and whether two people visited a different cafeteria at the same time.

    “Two people who make purchases within two minutes of each other, for example, are more likely to know each other than those who make purchases 30 minutes apart,” said Levy.

    And to validate the social network model, the researchers surveyed more than 1,000 employees, asking them to confirm the names of the people the investigators had identified as their dining partners.

    “A novel aspect of our study was to combine complementary types of data and to borrow tools from social network analysis to examine how the eating behaviors of a large group of employees were socially connected over a long period of time,” said co-author Mark Pachucki, Ph.D., associate professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Based on cross-sectional and longitudinal assessments of three million encounters between pairs of employees making cafeteria purchases together, the researchers found that food purchases by people who were connected to each other were consistently more alike than they were different.

    “The effect size was a bit stronger for healthy foods than for unhealthy foods,” said Levy. A key component of the research was to determine whether social networks truly influence eating behavior, or whether people with similar lifestyles and food preferences are more likely to become friends and eat together, a phenomenon known as homophily.

    “We controlled for characteristics that people had in common and analyzed the data from numerous perspectives, consistently finding results that supported social influence rather than homophily explanations,” said Levy.

    Why do people who are socially connected choose similar foods? Peer pressure is one explanation. “People may change their behavior to cement the relationship with someone in their social circle,” said Levy.

    Co-workers may also implicitly or explicitly give each other license to choose unhealthy foods or exert pressure to make a healthier choice. The study’s findings have several broader implications for public health interventions to prevent obesity.

    One option may be to target pairs of people making food choices and offer two-for-one sales on salads and other healthful foods but no discounts on cheeseburgers. Another approach might be to have an influential person in a particular social circle model more healthful food choices, which will affect others in the network.

    The research also demonstrates to policymakers that an intervention that improves healthy eating in a particular group will also be of value to individuals socially connected to that group.

    “As we emerge from the pandemic and transition back to in-person work, we have an opportunity to eat together in a more healthful way than we did before,” said Pachucki.

    “If your eating habits shape how your co-workers eat–even just a little–then changing your food choices for the better might benefit your co-workers as well,” concluded Pachucki. (ANI)

  • More than 300 Youths participated in Poetry Contest

    More than 300 Youths participated in Poetry Contest

    The final event of the Poetry Writing Contest organized by Daya Foundation and Rotary Club of Kathmandu Mid-town in collaboration with UNICEF Nepal was held on 27 November 2020 at 5 PM via Zoom.

    The main highlight of the 2-hour program was the announcement of 10 winners of the contest followed by a panel discussion on “Emotional/Mental Well-Being& Literary Avenues/Platforms for Youth Voices”.

    The event was a success with participation from 300+ youths and many dignitaries from several institutions. Aarya Bajrachayra from Rupy’s International School, Shivila Gc from Kathmandu University School of Management, Rachita Uprety from Silver Mountain School Of Hotel Management, Rubi Bhandari from Softwarica College, and Shreeya Shrestha from Rato Bangala Schoolare the winners from English category and Abinash Gajurel, a graduate, Chadani Acharya from Medhavi College, Bigyan Subedi from IOM, T.U., Smriti Adhikari from Tribhuvan University School of Management, and Sushila Rai from Diktel Multiple Campus are the winners from Nepali category who have won NRs. 10,000/- each as prize money. Following the announcement of winners, panelists Man Bahadur Mukhia (Literary figure), Tania Dhakwa (Chief of Communications at UNICEF Nepal), Dr. Sagun Ballav Panta (Psychiatrist at Teaching Hospital), and Dr. Rojina Manandhar (Psychologist/Clinical Hypnotherapist) shared their take on Emotional and Mental Health, and the importance of literature in expressing oneself.

    The theme of this contest was “Emotional/Mental Well-being and Cultural Identity” to address the growing mental health issues especially among youths and the importance of culture in establishing one’s own identity. The contest was open to youths from age group 15 to 30 year old. The participants were encouraged to submit their original writing in Nepali or English on topics like “Emotional/Mental Well-Being”, “Cultural Identity” and “Cultural Identity supporting Emotional/Mental Well-Being” or any topic of choice in line with these three titles by November 15, 2020. The submissions were anonymously reviewed by experienced and qualified literary experts who were: A) English Category: James C Hopkins, Lisa Choegyal, and Tania Dhakwaa B) Nepali Category: Anupam Pokhrel, Man Bahadur Mukhiya, and Dr. Ram Prasad Dahal The two sponsoring organizations were represented by Rajesh B Pradhan, President Daya Foundation and by Keepa M Handa, Executive Member, Health. Ltn. Gen. KNS Thapa, President RC Kathmandu Midtown.

    Chief Guest of Honor, District Governor Rajib Pokharel along with the sponsoring organizations shared positive notes regarding this type of initiative and collaborative effort for youth welfare at national level.

    Representing the organizing team, Moderator and MC Neeva Mathema Pradhan is Executive Member and Founder of Daya Foundation a non-profit organization that provides financial, technical and volunteer assistance to various projects in the areas of Education, Health and Culture. The poetry contest is part of Daya Foundation’s initiative to promote Culture. Past President, Rotary Club of Kathmandu Mid-town, Neeva M Pradhan also oversees “Young Professional Vocational/Skills Training” whose objective is to help develop youth skills and equip them with various toolsto apply in the practical field. UNICEF Nepal, headed by Tania Dhakhwa, Chief of Communications Unicef, collaborated with Daya Foundation and RC Kathmandu Mid-Town to raise awareness on Mental Health and the rise in depressive illnesses and suicide cases among youth in recent months. All of these institutions promoted and live streamed the event in their respective Facebook pages.

    The poetry contest will be ongoing every quarter and the dates and time frame will be posted in social media. It was agreed by all participating institutions that this type of safe platform for youth voices is much needed in current times and should be encouraged and promoted. This collaborative effort could help alleviate the ongoing crisis and bring a positive note in our community with a sense of belongingness.

     

  • Chitra Bahadur KC returns home after recovery from Covid-19

    Chitra Bahadur KC returns home after recovery from Covid-19

    Kathmandu: Rastriya Janamorcha Chairman Chitra Bahadur KC has returned home after achieving recovery from Covid-19.

    The octogenarian leader, admitted to Mediciti Hospital in Lalitpur on November 10 after suffering from pneumonia and coronavirus infection, got discharged from the hospital on Tuesday evening.

    Issuing a press release today, Chair KC thanked doctors and health workers involved in his treatment, as well as well-wishers.

    He also thanked the government for bearing all the expenses required for his treatment.