Even as the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic it will still face an epidemic on its roads, claiming over one million lives and injuring up to 50 million people annually. Against this head-spinning backdrop, making decisions that allow us to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal target of a
50% reduction in road deaths can feel like walking blindfolded.
This week in New York, nuclear arms and the efforts to abolish these weapons will reign paramount. Since its adoption in 2017 and its subsequent implementation in 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has been signed by over 90 Member States, 69 of whom have ratified or acceded to it.
While working as a doctor in the initial months of his medical career in southern India, a telephone call from his home in the Ladakh Himalayas convinced Nordan Otzer to involve himself with cervical cancer awareness.
In the wee hours of one morning in early November, Ernesto, 50, swallowed several glasses of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in the apartment where he lived alone in the Venezuelan capital, ending a life tormented by declining health and lack of resources to cope as he would have liked.
Chrysoula Zacharopoulou is a medical doctor. Born in Sparta (Greece) in 1976, she holds both French and Greek nationalities and is a graduate of Sapienza University in Rome, as well as holding a PhD on endometriosis. She arrived in France in 2007, practicing as a gynaecological surgeon at Bégin Military Hospital.
On the morning of 11 November, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the Director of Gaza's largest medical center, Al Shifa Hospital, sent out an emotional S.O.S. to the world through a television news interview and through the remaining charge on his mobile phone. His plea for an immediate ceasefire on behalf of a hospital under siege and its 700 critically injured and ill patients, 36 premature babies, 400 staff, and the 2000 vulnerable civilians. These people sheltering within the hospital and its garden were heard as far away as Afghanistan yet totally ignored where it counted most- with the men in Israel's war cabinet and Washington; they were busy executing and aiding an illegal war of choice on an unarmed, defenseless hospital and one of the poorest and densely populated places in the world.
The recent
downturn in sales of alternative meat products is only the latest evidence that the world is unlikely to give up animal protein completely in the long run.
’Going Green’ seems to Dr Jacquline Kisato's favorite catchphrase as she passionately explains her eco-friendly sanitary towel, a product she expects will help empower women and young girls while also putting money into farmers’ pockets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.