The poorest billion people on the planet contribute only 3% of the global carbon footprint. Those same billion people will also bear the brunt of climate change. Those people tend to be farmers, and they tend to be women.
It’s nice to see a mystery solved. We just saw some major panic in Indonesia about a treatment for a neglected tropical disease. The Jakarta Post reported this morning that, after a mass administration of drugs to fight lymphatic filariasis, “those treated by the drugs started to die or fall ill by the hundreds.” They ran the story under a headline that said “Did Disease-Fighting Drugs Do More Harm Than Good?”
The Center for Global Development’s excellent Global Health Policy blog noted today the huge resource deficit that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TD, and Malaria is currently facing -- a $2.6 billion funding gap over the next two years.
There are a lot of rumors coming out of Ukraine right now about a new form of swine flu, a brand new illness, or some kind of virulent pneumonia. I suspect it’s no more than swine flu with complications, but it’s causing some major panic in Kiev.
Afghanistan's first death from swine flu was reported on October 18. Since then, at least ten more people have died in Kabul, the LA Times reports. The news gets worse; the Afghanistan ministry of health has estimated that swine flu could infect up to 22% of the country’s population. That’s 6.6 million people, of which 330,000 are likely to develop severe complications. That’s more than Afghanistan’s struggling health system can handle.
The United Nations Population Fund organized a high-level meeting in Istanbul this week, calling attention to the economic benefit of supporting family planning and the rights of women. The meeting focused on the challenges that face Central Asia and Eastern Europe as the countries in the regions try to meet the Millennium Development goals that relate to maternal mortality.
A new article at The Daily Beast highlights the risks of motherhood in India in a striking way. Every year, half a million women die as a result of pregnancy. And for every death, there are 20-30 cases of maternal injury. At the same time, high-end private clinics support surrogate mothers bearing children for infertile couple from the wealthy world. It’s an ugly dichotomy, and it points to financial inequalities and health sector weakness.
Amnesty International issued a new report today accusing Israel of unjust division of water resources. Or, as they put it, “denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.” They state that Israel uses more than 80% of the Mountain Aquifer, one of many water sources for Israel and the only one for the West Bank.
