Nigeria’s accountant-general, the administrative head of the country’s treasury, has been
arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for allegedly stealing 80 billion naira ($134 million). This is a staggering theft in a country that has an estimated
poverty rate of 95 million (48% of the population) and some of the worst health indices in the world.
A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.
The Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads today – to further breakdown or breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.
Since the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) was established in 1947, the region has made extraordinary progress, emerging as a pacesetter of global economic growth that has lifted millions out of poverty.
A fifth wave of a new Covid 19 variant BA.2, followed by a surge in infections, is threatening to undermine the safety of New York city (NYC) which was gradually returning to normal after a prolonged pandemic shutdown. As a result, the City went on “high Covid alert.”
Ashley has vast work experience. She has laboured by the sweat of her brow in the blistering sun on the streets of Guatemala, in the open fields on farmlands and indoors, toiling for long hours to the hum of a sewing machine.
Her work resume might be impressive to some – street trader, farmworker and tailor – but she, like 160 million children around the world, is trapped in child labour, working desperately to support her impoverished family and provide for her education.
It is time to treat the scourge of Tuberculosis scourge with the same urgency as we did the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here’s the good news: there are a new set of breakthrough medicines to prevent and treat HIV, known as “long actings” because they can be taken every few months instead of every day, and they are coming on-stream. If, as they are rolled out, they are made available at scale, they could help save many lives and help end the AIDS pandemic.
"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to eliminate child labour." So said Dennis Sinyolo, Director of Education International's African Regional Office in Accra, Ghana adapting liberation icon and late South African president Nelson Mandela's famous quote about how education can change the world.
Despite World Day Against Child Labour launched in 2002 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), little has changed over the past two decades for the millions of children who remain
trapped.
Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.
Pakistan's North Waziristan district authorities have launched an aggressive vaccination drive after a polio case surfaced after 15 polio-free months in the country.
The disease was detected in a 15-month-old toddler about 15 kilometers away from the Afghanistan border. This area was considered a Taliban militant’s hub until 2014.
In what has been defined a historic consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, on 1st December 2021, the special session of the World Health Assembly agreed to kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
The past 20 years have seen a significant decline in maternal mortality rates
from 342 deaths to 211 per 100,000 globally . But every day, more than
800 women around the world die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, up to 42 days after delivery. Most of these deaths are preventable.
When it comes to gender equality and development, the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and the Arab States region continues to be in a paradoxical situation. While within the region,
several laws, policies and programming focused on gender equality are growing, women’s representation in government jobs, corporate roles, and national programming seem to be dismissed. Healthcare, education have seen improvement, most countries have become tech inclusive as well, but access to hospitals and educational institutions –at times due to social programming or gender-related policies continues to prevent women from accessing them and using them.
At a healthcare clinic in Thodathara, a village in the Thavanampalle mandal near Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, Dr Vijay Kumar calls in his next patient. “He is the most disciplined man I know,” Dr Kumar says with a hint of pride.
The world is being pressed by financial interests to raise interest rates, ostensibly to check inflation. After the US Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, more central banks have been doing likewise.
Considering inflation’s contemporary causes, such ‘follow the leader’ central bank mimicry cannot check it except by slowing economies. Worse, this has meant taking on huge new risks, seriously damaging world economic prospects in the medium and long-term.
The world's leading health and children specialised organisations have once again sounded the alarm bell about what they classify as “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits.
Growing up in Samoya Village of Bungoma County in the Western part of Kenya, Elvis Wanjala has fond childhood memories of the rainy season, chasing and catching black-bellied winged termites in the rain.
Over the last decade, Rwanda has invested in building efficient and resilient transport systems. Guided by the country’s Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy (GGCRS), the Government of Rwanda has carried out numerous initiatives to promote sustainable mobility and the green economy at large.
Before the pandemic emerged in 2020, health services in many Pacific Island countries were under-resourced, under-funded and under-staffed. Now following recent outbreaks of COVID-19, advancing the capacity and development of health and medical services in vulnerable nations, such as Tonga and Kiribati, is increasingly urgent.
When the Covid- 19 pandemic first broke out in Wuhan in 2020, no one imagined that it would wreak havoc on such a large scale. With over
6.2 million lives lost, countless infected and new variants emerging, the pandemic is still raging all around the world.