Health

New Robotic-Assisted Surgery Offers Inspiring Hope for Rwanda

By Aimable Twahirwa
In a newly established Centre of Excellence located in Masaka, a suburb of the Rwandan capital city, Kigali, an expanded lab, complete with innovative facilities and specialized instruments, is now giving surgeons a conducive environment to simulate how to perform minimally invasive surgeries.

Healthcare Crisis Follows Deadly Earthquake in Nepal

By Tanka Dhakal
Emergency health services are grappling with the enormous challenge of providing essential care to individuals affected by a deadly earthquake that claimed the lives of at least 153 and around 400 people wounded in western Nepal.

PPPs Fiscal Hoax Is a Blank Financial Silver Bullet

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure and service provision are both costly and risky. Worse, PPPs typically fail to ensure universal, let alone fair access to public amenities.

High Prevalence of Undetected Hypertension Found in Bangladesh

By Rafiqul Islam
Since her childhood, Parveen Begum, 52, has been adding extra salt while eating her meals. However, she did not know that this contributed to high blood pressure.

Commonwealth Civil Society Offers Ministers Crucial Recommendations for Gender Equality Advancement

By Alison Kentish
On August 22, 2023, Women's Affairs Ministers from the Commonwealth huddled in a room at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, they were meeting in person.

Deforestation, Encroachment Threaten West Africa’s One Health Plans

By Stella Paul
Thirty-three years ago, Bala Amerasekaran – a Sri Lankan by birth – visited Freetown, Sierra Leone. Since then, the West African nation has been his home, where Amerasekaran has dedicated his life to conserving the chimpanzee – Sierra Leone’s national animal.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Sharing ‘Real-Time’ Data, Consistent, Simple Messaging Helps

By Zofeen Ebrahim
After months of warding off appeals from his employers to get vaccinated for the COVID-19 disease, Mohammad Yusuf, 24, working as a live-in domestic worker in Karachi’s Clifton area, finally relented and got his first shot.

Women and War

By Jan Lundius
In 1968, the tobacco company Philip Morris introduced a new cigarette brand called Virginia Slims. Under the slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby” it was exclusively marketed to women. The advertising campaign exploited the civil rights movements of the 1960s, indicating that those cigarettes were enjoyed by strong, independent, and liberated women. A blatant lie – why would “independent” women choose to poison themselves with a commodity which each year causes more than 480,000 deaths in the US alone – nearly one in five deaths? Another question arising from this deceitful ad is: “How far have women come on their way to independence and liberation?”

Abortion, a Right Denied to Girls Raped in Brazil

By Mario Osava
A total of 17,456 babies were born to girls aged 10 to 14 in Brazil in 2021. The annual figures are falling, but still reflect the plight of ruined childhoods and the failures of judges and doctors when it comes to the issue of abortion rights.

Mauritius Begins to Correct a Historic Wrong Towards LGBTQI+ People

By Inés M. Pousadela
In response to lawsuits brought by LGBTQI+ activists, the Mauritius Supreme Court has issued two landmark judgments striking down the criminalisation of consensual sex between adult men as unconstitutional. Its reasoning turned upside down the argument used by anti-rights forces to attack LGBTQI+ activists in many African countries: it acknowledged that criminalisation is the foreign import rather than gay sex, and a relic of colonialism it’s high time to shake off.

Increasing Wastewater Treatment Is Vital for Families and Ecosystems in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
Insufficient wastewater treatment systems in El Salvador have taken a toll on the environment and the health of the population for decades, but some municipalities are putting more attention on processing their liquid waste.

New Zealand: Political Volatility under Cost-of-Living Crisis

By Andrew Firmin
It’s a rapid reversal for New Zealand’s Labour Party, in power for six years. At the last election in 2020 it won an outright majority, the first party to do so under the current voting system. But three years on, it’s finished a distant second in the election held on 14 October. The result speaks to a broader pattern seen amid economic strife in many countries – of intense political volatility and the rejection of incumbents.

Crisis Resilient Urban Futures: The Future of Asian and Pacific Cities 2023

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
Cities have always been dynamic hubs of culture, education, economic growth and opportunity, and most importantly, centres of social interaction attracting residents and visitors alike.

South Asian Community Health Workers Say Their Work is Work

By Zofeen Ebrahim
“Professionally, I am still where I was 23 years ago when I started working as a lady health worker (LHW),” said a disgruntled Yasmin Siddiq, 47, from Karachi. “I will probably retire in the same capacity, as a Grade 5 government servant, without any hope for upward mobility.”

Behind Each Climate Disaster Awaits a Tuberculosis Crisis

By Maria Beumont
At the end of September, two weeks after the United Nations held a High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis (TB), a torrential storm dropped 6” of rain on New York City. The intensity of the storm recalled that of Hurricane Ida two years earlier, which—in the largest city in the United States—damaged more than 3% of buildings, killed 13 people, and left 380 families homeless.

Seize Opportunity to End Last Major Mercury Device

By Charlie Brown
As the Minamata Convention on Mercury’s fifth Conference of the Parties (COP5) approaches, momentum builds to adopt the Africa Region’s proposed amendment to phase out dental amalgam – a cavity filling material that is approximately 50% mercury.

Mexico on the Rights Path

By Inés M. Pousadela
Mexico’s Supreme Court recently declared abortion bans unconstitutional, effectively decriminalising abortion throughout the vast federal country, so far characterised by a legislative patchwork. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by a civil society organisation, Information Group on Reproductive Choice. It forces the Federal Congress to repeal the Federal Penal Code articles that criminalise abortion. Effective immediately, those seeking abortions and those providing them can no longer be punished for doing so. The ruling also enshrines the right to access abortion procedures in all institutions of the federal health system network, even in states where the crime of abortion remains on the books.

To End Child Marriage in Southern & East Africa, Governments Need to Strengthen Laws & Implementation

By Divya Srinivasan
Almost one third (32%) of women aged 20 to 24 in Eastern and Southern Africa - around 50 million – were married before 18 years old. To address this pervasive problem, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum has adopted the SADC Model Law on Eradicating Child Marriage and Protecting Children Already in Marriage, a legal framework providing a comprehensive, integrated approach to ending child marriage and protecting children already married.

Setting the Record Straight

By Saima Wazed
This year, three of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) six regions elect new Regional Directors (RD). The South-East Asia Region (SEARO) is composed of only 11 Member States, yet is home to over a quarter of the world’s population. Two SEARO Member States, Nepal and Bangladesh, have nominated their candidates to contest for RD.

Faced with Crushing Debts, World’s Poorest Nations to Slash Public Spending by Over 229 Billion Dollars

By Thalif Deen
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are returning to Africa, for the first time in decades, with the “same old failed message”. “Cut your spending, sack public service workers, and pay your debts-- despite the huge human costs,” says Oxfam International’s interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar, following the release of new Oxfam report.

Kerala Proved Good Governance Vital in a Pandemic

By Ranjit Devraj
When COVID-19 claimed millions of lives across India, Kerala state at the southern tip of the subcontinent stood apart for low mortality rates that experts attribute to good governance, a robust public health delivery system and strong civil society support.
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