At which one of the following place, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is going to establish Global Traditional Medicine Centre ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Jamnagar (India). The WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre is at Jamnagar in Gujarat. Its foundation stone was laid there on 19 April 2022 — less than two months before this examination — by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, present. WHO describes the Centre as a headquarters department of the Organization, sitting in its Division of Universal Health Coverage and Life Course but outposted to Jamnagar, and established in 2022 with foundational support from the Government of India. Its remit is the evidence base: harnessing the potential of traditional medicine through data, research, standards and appropriate use, rather than promoting any single system. Jamnagar was chosen because the city already hosts the Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda. Two points of emphasis a student should carry: this is WHO's FIRST and so far ONLY global centre for traditional medicine anywhere in the world, and it is an outposted WHO office, not an Indian national institution. The stem's future tense reflects where matters stood at the June-2022 exam, when the foundation stone had just been laid; WHO now describes the Centre as established.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) There is no WHO traditional-medicine centre at Jaffna. The distractor works only on the alliteration with Jamnagar and Johannesburg — all three options begin with 'J', which is the whole design of the trap.  (c) Plausible-sounding, because traditional medicine has a large presence across Africa, but wrong on the facts. The Centre is a single global one and it was outposted to Jamnagar; no parallel global centre was set up at Johannesburg.  (d) The trap aimed at candidates who remember that the Centre came to India but not which city. Haridwar carries a strong popular association with yoga and Ayurveda, which is exactly why it is offered. The agreement and the foundation stone are for Jamnagar, the seat of the Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda.

Concept: Traditional medicine is used by a very large share of the world's population, and WHO's problem with it has never been popularity but evidence — inconsistent product quality, weak regulation, little clinical trial data and no common terminology. The Global Traditional Medicine Centre is WHO's institutional answer: a single global knowledge hub working on research methods, data and standards, so that traditional systems can be assessed by the same criteria as any other intervention. India's interest is obvious, since it maintains an entire ministry, AYUSH, covering Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homoeopathy, and has pressed for international recognition of these systems for decades. Locating a WHO outposted office at Jamnagar therefore sits at the intersection of a health-governance question and a soft-power one.

State PCS 2022 Q85 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q85 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer