India is on track to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal target to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by 2030.

Maternal Mortality

• Maternal mortality is a measure of the reproductive health of women in an area.
• The WHO describes maternal death as a female death from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management.
• MMR is defined as the number of maternal deaths during a given time period per 100,000 live births during the same time period.
• The SGD goal 3.1 states, by 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 live births.
• According to UNICEF, the major causes for maternal mortality are severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure during pregnancy.

For the fifth consecutive year, Finland secured the top spot in the World Happiness Index. 

World Happiness Report

• It is a publication of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
• The rankings (called the World Happiness Index) use both secondary and survey data in order to formulate the ranking.
• The parameters for assessment include GDP per capita in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), healthy life expectancy at birth, level of social support, generosity, perceptions on corruption, and freedom to make life choices. 
• Life expectancy and GDP per capita are computed from ready-made data of the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) respectively. 
• India is ranked 25th on the list, according to the report.

United Nations, Indonesia call for support from parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

Minamata Convention

• It is an international environmental treaty that aims to protect human health and the environment from the harmful effects of mercury and its compounds.
• India is a party to the Minamata Convention and ratified it in 2018.
• China is also a party to the convention and ratified it in 2016.
• The objective of the Minamata Convention is, to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds.

Arsenic

• Arsenic is a natural component of the earth’s crust and is widely distributed throughout the environment in the air, water, and land.
• Arsenic is highly toxic in its inorganic form.
• Contaminated water used for drinking, food preparation, and irrigation of food crops poses the greatest threat to public health from arsenic.
• Long-term exposure to arsenic from drinking water and food can cause cancer and skin lesions.

Reasonable accommodation

• It is a principle that promotes equality, enables the grant of positive rights, and prevents discrimination based on disability, health condition, or personal belief.
• Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) defines:
  • a reasonable accommodation is “necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms”.
• The general principle is that reasonable accommodation should be provided unless some undue hardship is caused by such accommodation.