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Thursday, September 19, 2019
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
UCO building fire points to larger question of fire safety in older Bengaluru buildings
ADGP Fire Services Sunil Agarwal said that since the building was old, it did not have fire safety measures as per the new norms.
Even as people were being evacuated from Farah Towers, the building which houses the UCO Bank building on Bengaluru’s MG Road, officials confirmed that it did not have fire safety norms in place. Wednesday’s fire originated in the electrical room on the ground floor of the building and was rising up to the first floor when passers-by rushed into the building and helped put it out. However, several eyewitnesses told TNM that they had to carry fire extinguishers from neighbouring buildings since the building, Farah Towers, did not have firefighting equipment inside. ADGP Fire Services Sunil Agarwal inspected the location of the fire and told the media that since the building was old, it did not have arrangements as per the new norms. “These are old buildings and so they must have obtained a no-objection certificate as per the old norms. We have been issuing notices to the new buildings, we will see what action can be taken about this building,” Sunil Agarwal told the media. According to the norms, high-rise buildings such as Farah Towers needs to have at least six-metres access – also called a setback – for firefighters to get to the spot of the fire. However, this building did not have it and fire officials in such cases have to douse the fire from the road. Farah Towers on MG Road "We have been issuing notices to all the buildings but none of these buildings on this stretch has the required setback. These are old buildings so nothing can be done and we have to fight the fire from the road. These old buildings must have received an NOC much earlier. We will see what action can be taken. Ideally 30-40 people who work in the building can be given fire safety training," Sunil Agarwal said. TNM spoke to Uday Vijayan, who lost his 10-year-old son in a fire mishap and is the co-founder of Beyond Carlton, a city-based fire safety community. He suggests that older buildings should have fire-fighting equipment within the premises so that the fire can be extinguished internally. “Fire safety in older buildings is a big challenge. We have been pushing for a retrofit policy in these old buildings. These buildings must be fitted with installations like fire exits, fire extinguishers, water outlets within buildings, etc. You may not be able to add a water tank to an old building but you can definitely have a hydrant that is put outside, said Uday, adding, “How long should we wait for fire services, especially in areas that are congested and have constant traffic jams? There have to be provisions to fight. Traditionally, most of the fires are fought internally, with sprinklers, etc. it is important. But this is being delayed since this costs money.”
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Fighting TB with phone calls: A project that reminded patients to take their medicine
The 99DOTS project was withdrawn from hospitals after only two years, in a move that forced patients to revert to the previous method, which was largely considered inconvenient and unreliable.
Huizhong Wu
When patients skip medication, the results can be dire. For many years, this was the quandary faced by India’s programme to combat tuberculosis (TB) – one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). In India, 4,23,000 TB patients died in 2016 – one-third of the world’s 1.4 million death toll. In 2016, Indian public health experts thought they had hit on an innovative solution. Called 99DOTS, it was a programme that worked with the already existing Direct Observational Therapy, or DOTS method. DOTS was launched in 1993 in order to tackle the serious issue of each patient’s adherence to TB medication. With the DOTS project, patients had to visit health centres every day for medicine so the doctor could be sure that the patients weren’t skipping their medication. It was an exhausting process for everyone, with the patients complaining about the frequent travelling and the doctors finding it difficult to track patients who had missed their dosage. The 99DOTS project was a Bengaluru-based research initiative by Microsoft Research. The social enterprise called Everwell Health Solutions aimed to offer a low-cost innovation to support adherence as part of the official renewed DOTS strategy for tuberculosis patients in India. It incorporated the use of mobile phones, a practice that is not a new one. Places such as Kenya, Cambodia and California have recorded different ways to incorporate mobile phones in the DOTS strategy with considerable success. “Most technology-based DOTS strategies like this (incorporating mobile phones) are expensive, with costs going up to 100 dollars per patient, in some cases,” said Andrew Cross, co-founder of the 99DOTS project. “This becomes very challenging in a place like India where you have 2.4 million patients per year,” he added. “The concept is that we use inexpensive envelopes that are wrapped around the medication pack. When patients take their pills for the day, there is a toll-free number on the back to which the patients are instructed to give a free call. The healthcare provider is alerted if a patient doesn’t give the free call and can call the patient to remind them or counsel them. It’s entirely free of cost for the patient,” explained Cross. Keeping its success in mind, the 99DOTS project seemed promising for India. It tackled many issues all at once by bringing in technology applications, while also making it almost free of cost for the Indian patient. After a successful pilot in Bengaluru’s St John’s Medical College, it launched in several other hospitals in the city, and in some other Indian states as well. However, according to patients and hospital staff, the 99DOTS project was withdrawn from hospitals after only two years, a move that forced patients to revert to the previous DOT method, which was largely considered inconvenient and unreliable. To understand what happened to a seemingly successful project like 99DOTS – and to try and hammer out a workable solution for the future – it is necessary to make sense of the past, and the kind of challenges this project faced. Initial stages of 99DOTS The 99DOTS project was launched as a pilot in 2013 at St John’s Medical College, with roughly 20 patients who were both HIV positive and had TB. “The patients responded quite well,” said Dr Rashmi Rodriguez, the doctor at St John’s who oversaw the pilot. “We were looking at being supportive without them having to come to the hospital every day – or every alternate day – and we gave them the option of doing this at home.” After the success of the pilot, 99DOTS was taken to other hospitals in Bengaluru. It was implemented in ART (Antiretroviral) centres in the hospitals for HIV-TB patients. “It was easier for the patients,” noted Manjunath, a senior health supervisor at the Bowring & Lady Curzon Hospitals, one of the first hospitals in Bengaluru where 99DOTS was launched after the pilot. “The staff nurses told the patients what to do and how to call, and the people at the health centre checked on them when there was no missed call. It was successful. We had around 400 patients per year,” he said. TB care in India has gone through several drastic changes, and there are a few people who have witnessed them all. When treatment organiser Prakash Sonawane spoke about the TB programme in India, he traced how the changes in the system affected patients through the years. At a December 2018 lecture about TB nursing care around the world, he said: “When the National Tuberculosis Programme was there, I remember Rahul to whom I gave daily medicines for each month. There would "be no contact until the next refill, and I would not know if he was being regular or not until the next time I met him.” “After that, the government introduced DOTS in 1993, the patients had to come in every alternate day and I administered medicine at the clinic. Suresh, one of the patients, used to complain about his loss of wages and the travel costs to visit the health centre.” “There was then the introduction of 99DOTS in 2016, which let patients give missed calls that update the hospital whether they have taken the medicine or not. One day, a patient, Seetha, forgot to call, and I was sent an SMS and I could immediately call her to find out if she had taken the medication or not.” Challenges amidst success As the 99DOTS project expanded to states across India, there were several success stories. However, at the same time people began noticing problems with the project as well. A June 2018 study in Karnataka’s Davanagere district showed that the reason for non-adherence by several patients was the lack of awareness in making a phone call after taking the medication, or not knowing how to use a mobile phone. There were also reasons like forgetting to make the call, and network problems and mobile issues. Another study published in February 2018 conducted research across several ART centres in Karnataka. The patients reported not having constant access to mobile phones. The hospital staff also mentioned a lack of training. The Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) also noted that one of the problems with 99DOTS is that there is only an automated response on the phone, and no personal connection. To tackle this, KHPT started project Mitra, a phone-based care and support system that has people talking to patients and counselling them free of charge. “We focus on the human component more than the technology. We have trained counsellors who talk to the patients one on one,” said Karthikeyan, a member of KHPT. A challenge that they have faced, however, is scarcity of staff, and problems raised by family members of patients, as in the case of male counsellors talking to female patients. Despite these issues, however, 99DOTS was largely considered to be a successful project. A study conducted in a government medical college in Rajkot, Gujarat, concluded that the treatment adherence rate was at 96% in completed treatment patients. It went on to point out that according to the WHO, even in developed countries less than half of the chronic disease patients take medication as needed. The study also noted that “99DOTS enables differentiated care: instead of mandating that all patients receive frequent counselling … while limited programme resources are focused on cases that need the most attention.” Another study in Andhra Pradesh spoke to beneficiaries, with one of them saying, “I have to give missed call daily after taking tablet, I do sometimes forget to take daily medicine, (but) as I have to give a call, it reminds me that I have to take tablet.” Halted after 2 years Considering this, it came as a shock to patients and hospital staff when the 99DOTS method was abruptly stopped. “The public most likely think that we halted the project, but that isn’t the case,” said Cross. “The funding to make envelopes (that are wrapped around the medication packs) was a time-limited deployment, so after a while we exhausted the funds. We’ve open-sourced the technology and envelope design right now to allow state governments to procure the envelopes. Some states have already taken steps to procure the 99DOTS envelopes through the tendering process, but for others it's still an ongoing process. It's most likely a matter of prioritising resources for citizens, and working within budgets and timelines, so we expect that the project will be funded eventually depending on available resources,” he added. However, withdrawal of the project has hit patients quite hard and no one there is clear about when it will return. At the Bowring & Lady Curzon Hospitals, doctors have stopped checking up on patients entirely, and interaction between doctor and patient has come to a standstill. The patients line up and have their forms checked, are given the medication, and after hastily transferring them into other containers, quickly leave the premises. They hardly speak to the nurses or the doctors. “We come every month and get the medicine and go. Why will the doctors care if we take the medicine or not? It is up to us to take care of our body,” said a 30-year-old female patient who wished to remain anonymous. She had not heard of 99DOTS or DOTS, and said that doctors motivating patients to take their medicine was unheard of. “There have been times when I have skipped taking my medication for two weeks, even one whole month. But what is to be done? The doctor just scolds me and then tells me to take the medication regularly,” added another middle-aged patient who also has not heard of 99DOTS. “Having a disease like this is shameful. I come to the ART centre, making sure that no one sees me, get my medication and leave quickly. I do not want to talk to the doctors. What is there to say?” asked Jacquelyn, another patient. The project has been stopped in other hospitals across Bengaluru as well. Dr Uma, the Medical Officer at Victoria Hospital, said, “99DOTS was closed six months ago here. I don’t know why it was stopped. Personally, I thought it was better (with 99DOTS) because it had a good follow-up system. Now there’s nothing, we just dispense tablets every 28 days to the patients.” The director of the National Tuberculosis Institute, Bengaluru, did not respond to multiple inquiries about the state of the project. It is clear that while the 99DOTS project has potential in India, there are problems like funding and implementation which in turn impact the patients severely. Long term planning for both sustainability and finances are necessary to help out both the doctors and patients involved on ground. “It’s a good project,” observed Dr Uma. “I have seen several patients benefiting from it; life becomes so much easier for them. It will be useful if it comes back soon,” she said.
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Why is Isha Foundation taking money to plant trees? Petition against 'Cauvery Calling'
The petitioner has argued that in the past, personalities like Saalumarada Thimakka and Jadav Payeng who had no finances, had planted trees without collecting money from the public.
PTI Photograph
The Karnataka High Court issued notices to the state government after a petition was filed questioning the 'Cauvery Calling' campaign launched by Isha Foundation headed by 'Sadhguru' Jaggi Vasudev. The petition raised questions about how the foundation was collecting funds from the public for the campaign. The petition was filed by advocate AV Amarnathan questioning the Karnataka government for supporting 'Cauvery Calling'. It mentions an event involving Jaggi Vasudev and Chief Minister BS Yeddiyurappa in which it was announced that 2 crore saplings would be provided by the Karnataka government. Cauvery Calling is a nation-wide campaign focused on the Cauvery river and under the campaign, the Isha Foundation claims to plant 242 crore trees along the Cauvery river under the umbrella of the Rally for Rivers, a campaign launched by the same foundation earlier. The point of contention however is that Isha Foundation - which enjoys the patronage of several celebrities, industrialists, politicians and CSR wings of multinational companies - has called for people to donate Rs 42 per tree. A look at the website by the foundation shows that as of Wednesday, contributions to plant almost 4 crore trees were collected. Through three crowdfunding links provided on the website, donations have come in for 1.4 lakh trees - which adds up to Rs 58 lakh. Whether this is only from individuals or also from companies and organisations is unclear. A screenshot from https://ift.tt/2Ato0UR The petitioner AV Amarnathan sought directions from the court to stop the Isha Foundation from collecting money from the public for the Cauvery Calling campaign. The petitioner questioned the need for the Isha Foundation to collect money from the public for planting trees along the Cauvery river. "The Isha Foundation is planning to plant 253 crores plants to save Cauvery river. The report states that the Isha Foundation is collecting Rs. 42/- per tree planting from the public. That means the Isha Foundation is collecting a sum of Rs, 10,626/- crores. This collection of money from the public is very disturbing," argued the petitioner. The petitioner questioned if such a sum can be allowed to be collected by a private organization to do work on government/public land. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev flagged off Cauvery Calling in a bike rally starting in Talacauvery, the birthplace of the Cauvery river on September 3. In an event held in Palace Grounds in Bengaluru on September 8, Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa announced that the state Forest Department would donate 2 crore saplings for the movement. The event was attended by BJP leaders CT Ravi and PC Mohan. The petitioner also argued that in the past personalities like Saalumarada Thimakka and Jadav Payeng had planted trees in the state without collecting money from the public. 106-year-old Saalumarada Thimmakka is an environmentalist from Karnataka who became infamous after planting and tending to 385 banyan trees along a four-kilometre highway stretch between Hulikal and Kudoor village in Tumakuru district. Jadav Payeng is credited with planting saplings and seeds along a dry sandbar by the Brahmaputra river in Assam, creating a forest over 500 acres of land. AV Amarnathan has also asked if the Karnataka government gave approval for donating saplings after going through studies that Isha Foundation claims has been done on the Cauvery basin. “The state also has to study the project, and look into the pros and cons of the said project to give approval for such a huge project,” the petition said. Isha Foundation has however maintained in the past too, that it has a Board of eminent members that oversees the activities of 'Rally for Rivers' and 'Cauvery Calling'. This board consists of Justice Arijit Pasayat, retired Supreme Court Judge, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, Ravi Singh, Secretary General and CEO of World Wide Fund for Nature – India, several former bureaucrats and Dr AS Kiran Kumar, former chairperson of ISRO. Justice Mohammad Nawaz hearing the case asked the Karnataka Government and Isha Foundation to file objections within three weeks.
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Why JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda does not want an alliance with the Congress
Caught in the middle of growing dissatisfaction among JD(S) leaders, Deve Gowda had to concede that his party would not ally with the Congress.
JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda on Monday stated that mid-term polls would inevitably occur in the state and that his party, the JDS(S), would contest the upcoming elections alone. "Mid-term polls are inevitable in Karnataka. In January or February, it may occur, so, let's contest independently without going for an alliance with anyone,” Deve Gowda told his party men in Bengaluru recently, while adding, “We will not dip our fingers in the same oil and will not commit that mistake again. Let’s face all the elections independently." This was a volte face from his statement on September 13, where he had told the media that he would make a decision on allying with the Congress for the upcoming bye-elections after dialogue with AICC President Sonia Gandhi. Deve Gowda’s statement that he is looking to continue the alliance, came as a surprise to many in political circles. Not only had the JD(S) faced many a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, but it had also seen three of its MLAs resigning, including state President AH Viswanath. The hint that the JD(S) may once again go with the Congress almost started a fresh bout of rebellion with leaders like GT Deve Gowda speaking up against it. MLA from Chamundeshwari assembly constituency, GT Devegowda – a loyalist, who has stood firmly by the JD(S) patriarch’s side, accused HD Kumaraswamy of trying to sabotage his political career. GT Devegowda had also hinted that he may quit the JD(S) and join the BJP. For decades, the Congress and JD(S) have been rivals in southern Karnataka. People in several villages in the Old Mysuru region, especially Mandya and Hassan identify themselves as Congress or JD(S) supporters. Karnataka has witnessed several political feuds in this region, with cadre from the two parties hurting each other physically due to the political rivalry. The first blow to the Congress and JD(S) cadre came when the party’s seniors announced that they were coming together to fight the Lok Sabha elections held earlier in May. It was a bitter pill to swallow and both Congress and JD(S) cadre had worked against the alliance’s candidates during the Lok Sabha elections. JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda too had lost from the Tumakuru segment because of the rivalry between the cadre. The defeat was seen as a humiliation by the JD(S) cadre as Deve Gowda is one of the tallest leaders in the state. Several JD(S) seniors blamed the Congress for working against Deve Gowda and deliberately sabotaging his chances. Deve Gowda himself, had blamed former Congress CM, Siddaramaiah, for the collapse of the coalition government. Read: Dissent in JD(S): Party loyalists openlylash out against ex CM Kumaraswamy This blame game, however, is not one sided. Congress cadre and its leaders in the state too, blamed the high command for allying with the JD(S) and for the elctoral losses it suffered. Karnataka Congress leaders, including Siddaramaiah blamed the JD(S) for its failure in the Lok Sabha elections. Several Congress seniors had threatened to quit the party if the alliance continued. Caught in the middle of growing dissatisfaction among JD(S) leaders, Deve Gowda had to concede that his party would not ally with the Congress. Self-preservation or not, Deve Gowda’s latest announcement is being seen as a last attempt to keep his flock together and to prevent further defections.
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Fire in UCO Bank's MG Road Branch in Bengaluru, no injuries reported
The fire broke out on the ground floor of the building at 2.45pm on Wednesday.
A fire broke out in Farah Towers, which houses the UCO Bank's MG Road branch, in Bengaluru on Wednesday afternoon. Smoke was seen billowing out of the building located next to the Barton Centre at around 2:45 pm. The fire originated in the cable room of the building on the ground floor. It was immediately extinguished by people from a neighboring building. Damages were restricted to the cable room and no injuries were reported. "People tried to jump but we asked them not to panic. We took fire cylinders from our building and extinguished the fire. We then then escorted people out. The fire engines came after we extinguished the fire," Ali, in-charge of maintenance in a nearby building told TNM. However, there was smoke in the first three floors of the building and it was cleared only after fire department officials reached the spot. A fire department official said that there were no reports of injuries among those who left the building, "Three fire engines left the Mayo Hall station and extinguished the fire. There are no incidents of injury." Bala, an employee of Emerrxe, a company that has its office on the first floor said, "The firemen came and took care of the smoke. We all exited the building as asked." Lakshman, a security guard at the building said that there were 200 people inside the building on the ground, first and second floors. Officials on ground added that they suspect short circuit is the cause of the fire. The incident brought into focus issues of fire compliance in older buildings in the city, particularly in central areas like Brigade Road and MG Road. Fire officials told TNM that they require a 'setback' or space of 6m between the road and the building in case of a fire. "We have been issuing notices none of these buildings have setback. These are old buildings so nothing can be done and we have to fight from the road. They must have gotten NOC from earlier time since this is an old building. We will see what action can be taken. 30-40 people working in building should be ideally given fire training," an official said.
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'We Shall Overcome': California anti-vaccine activists claim civil rights mantle
The approach reflected the level of desperation among families staunchly opposed to vaccinating their children.
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