China revisions to defense law push Beijing closer to war: scholar
01/17/2021 08:22 PM
Beijing. CNA file photo
Taipei, Jan. 17 (CNA) Beijing s recent amendments to its National Defense Law indicate that China has shifted its defense strategy to a more pre-emptive posture, making it more likely that it wages war, according to an expert with a government-funded think tank in Taiwan.
The assessment was made in a paper by Lin Cheng-jung (林政榮), a visiting research fellow from Taiwan s military at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), that was posted on the institute s website on Jan. 12.
China s National People s Congress approved the amendments to the National Defense Law on Dec. 26, 2020, and they took effect on the first day of 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented stress on India’s urban public health infrastructure, underscoring the need for urban planning to account for increased demand for health amenities during crises. This paper evaluates the city of Mumbai’s 1991 and 2034 development plans and finds inherent infrastructural inadequacies. It calls on urban-policymakers to complement development plans with robust dynamic health strategies that consider technological advances and epidemiological changes. Public-private partnerships should be encouraged to overcome the challenges of funding and technology adoption in health planning.
Attribution: Sayli Udas-Mankikar, “Health Infrastructure Planning Amid COVID-19: The Case of Mumbai,”
ORF Issue Brief No. 435, January 2021, Observer Research Foundation.
NHIS undergoing reforms to fast track attainment of universal health coverage
There are indications that the ongoing Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the non-passage of the amended National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Act have further slowed down the uptake of health insurance packages and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country.
In fact, The Guardian investigation revealed that more than 170 million Nigerians are still paying out-of-pocket to access medical services and out-of-pocket payments can make households and individuals incur catastrophic health expenditure and this can exacerbate the level of poverty. x
Critics say the NHIS has remained nonfunctional and the coverage rate has dropped from over 10 per cent (5.6 million Nigerians) ten years ago to just barely 1.72 per cent (one million Nigerians) today.