From UNICEF:
Together we will reach the day when no children die from preventable causes: zero children killed by malaria and measles, poisoned by unclean water, lost for a lack of safe shelter or by falling prey to malnutrition.
As the organization that has saved more children’s lives than any other humanitarian organization, UNICEF is committed to doing whatever it takes, until we can ensure the survival of every human born on this planet.
From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, click through for full slideshow.
A model and an ambassador
Supermodel Liya Kebede was born in Ethiopia and now serves as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.
Herself a mother, Liya helps WHO in its campaign to raise global awareness of maternal and child health issues, and improve the health of mothers and children.
Although she now lives in New York, Liya still frequently visits Ethiopia. In 2009 she returned to her country to get a first-hand look at the life and death struggles that women there face during childbirth.
RapidSMS technology helps fight malnutrition in Malawi
From UNICEF, excerpt:
LILONGWE, Malawi (January 6, 2010) — The short message service (SMS) is proving to be a great ally in Malawi’s battle to contain malnutrition and improve the lives of the country’s children.
Since January of 2009, UNICEF—in collaboration with Columbia University - has been supporting the Government of Malawi in piloting the use of RapidSMS for nutrition surveillance on three different sites—in Dedza, Salima and Kasungu districts.
The project aims to greatly reduce the time needed for data collection at health centers and data transmission to health offices at the district and national levels. It also aims to improve data sharing, provide instant data validation, and enhance the ability of nutritionists to provide real-time feedback to health workers on the treatment needs of each individual child.
From USAID, Male Circumcision and HIV Prevention
Circumcision Can Save African States Billions
From Nairobi’s Business Daily newspaper (via allAfrica.com), an op/ed about quelling the spread of AIDS in Africa by promoting male circumcision. This method is supported by the World Health Organization and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
East and Central African economies could save up to $20 billion in the cost of Aids programmes over the next 15 years by scaling up the voluntary male circumcision programme.
The savings would result from the circumcision of up to 80 per cent of adult and newborn males in 14 countries in the region.
The savings in funds for Aids programmes in these countries that include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda would result from a significant reduction in adult HIV infections between 2009 and 2025, estimated at over four million.
However, this would only be achieved if 12 million male circumcisions on newborns and men aged between 15 and 49 years are performed in 2012, which has been designated ‘peak year’, followed by an average of between four and five million cuts between 2015 and 2025.
The enhanced male circumcision programme would require an investment of US$2.5 billion between 2009 and 2025.
Still taking signatures— Over 38,000 have signed the ONE Campaign petition to President Obama asking him to include $1.75 billion for the Global Fund in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget. If you haven’t done so yet, please sign this important petition by clicking the postcard above, and ask your friends and family to do the same!
UN praises US and SKorea for lifting HIV/AIDS travel ban, urges 57 countries to follow
From the Canadian Press (eh?), excerpt:
The United Nations praised the United States and South Korea on Monday for lifting travel bans on people with HIV and urged 57 other countries with travel restrictions to end them quickly.
President Barack Obama announced in October that the U.S. would overturn a 22-year-old travel ban against people with HIV, and the new rule eliminating the ban came into force on Monday. South Korea eliminated travel restrictions for people with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, on Jan. 1.
Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, which co-ordinates the U.N.’s AIDS response, called the policy changes “a victory for human rights on two sides of the globe.”
Ending the restrictions means travellers who are HIV positive can now enter both countries.
One in 10 births around world premature, WHO says
From Reuters, excerpt:
GENEVA, Jan 4 (Reuters) - One in 10 of the some 130 million births around the world each year is premature, the vast majority in poorer countries where chances of survival are low, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.
An article in the U.N. agency’s January bulletin also reported a “dramatic rise” in pre-term births in a range of richer countries over the past 20 years, especially in North America and parts of Europe.
Based on studies from the mid-1990s to 2007, it said 85 percent of births before the normal 37-week human gestation period were in Asia, with some 70 million, and in Africa, with more than 40 million annually.
But the highest rates of pre-term deliveries against the overall total of births were in Africa, with an average of nearly 12 percent, and North America, with 10.6 percent, according to the article by WHO specialists and researchers.
In Europe, the figure was only 6.2 percent and in Latin America and the Caribbean just 9.1 percent.
Many premature babies in Asia and Africa have no access to effective care, said Dr Lale Say, a lead author of the article. One born at 32 weeks, weighing less than 2,000 grams, has little chance of survival, the WHO specialist wrote.
By contrast, an infant born at 32 weeks in a developed country is as likely to survive as one born at full term.
US lifts HIV/Aids immigration ban
From the BBC, excerpt:
The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/Aids from entering the country.
President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.
The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012.
The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.
It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/Aids.
World’s Healthiest Food by Nick Kristof
Nick Kristof’s Sunday column, excerpt:
It was a lack of this substance that led to a tragedy that I encountered the other day at a hospital here in the Honduran capital. Three babies lay in cots next to one another with birth defects of the brain and spinal cord.
In the first cot was Rosa Álvarez, 18 days old and recovering from surgery to repair a hole in her spine. She also suffers from a brain deformity.
In the next cot was Ángel Flores, soft tissue protruding from his back.
Closest to the door was José Tercera. His mother unwrapped a bandage on his head, and I saw a golf-ball-size chunk of his brain spilling out a hole in his forehead.
The doctors believe the reason for these deformities, called neural tube defects, was that their mothers did not have enough micronutrients, particularly folic acid, while pregnant. These micronutrients are the miracle substance I’m talking about, and there’s scarcely a form of foreign aid more cost-effective than getting them into the food supply.
I’m about to go on a documentary binge from my Netflix queue, and I realized that I never posted about this one that I watched a while back. It’s very eye-opening, especially being an American woman that never really thought about childbirth as anything other than the typical hospital stay sort of experience. I highly recommend watching this film, especially for all the ladies out there.
The Business of Being Born
Birth: it’s a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to examine and question the way American women have babies. The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system. When director Epstein discovers she is pregnant during the making of the film, the journey becomes even more personal. Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency?
For over three decades, Chevron chose profit over people.
While drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1964 to 1990, Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – deliberately dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, spilled roughly 17 million gallons of crude oil, and left hazardous waste in hundreds of open pits dug out of the forest floor. To save money, Texaco chose to use environmental practices that were obsolete, did not meet industry standards, and were illegal in Ecuador and the United States.
The result was, and continues to be, one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. Contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface streams has caused local indigenous and campesino people to suffer a wave of mouth, stomach and uterine cancer, birth defects, and spontaneous miscarriages. Chevron has never cleaned up the mess it inherited, and its oil wastes continue to poison the rainforest ecosystem. (True Cost of Chevron)
Give the Chevron CEO and Board of Directors a piece of your mind.
Trailer for the documentary CRUDE
Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion Amazon Chernobyl case, CRUDE is a real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking as it examines a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.
At least 12,220 dead from H1N1 according to the World Health Organization
From Reuters Alertnet, in its entirety:
GENEVA, Dec 30 (Reuters) - At least 12,220 deaths from H1N1 flu have been formally confirmed around the globe but the pandemic appears to be declining, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday.
The death figure, set as of Dec. 27, was around 700 up on the toll a week previously. The week before that registered a rise of about 1500 deaths.
The report said the most active areas of current transmission were in central and eastern Europe, with focal points in recent weeks reported in Georgia, Montenegro and Ukraine.
In other parts of eastern and in southern Europe — ranging from Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine and Russia’s Urals region, all respiratory infections — including seasonal flu — were widespread.
Despite the recent focus on H1N1, which emerged in April, WHO estimates that seasonal flu kills from 250,000 to 300,000 people around the world each year.
Speaking in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that the H1N1 pandemic — being tackled widely with vaccination campaigns — may not be conquered until 2011 and argued for constant vigilance against the virus.
The latest WHO update said that in western Europe, transmission of H1N1 remained widespread and active but overall activity of the disease had peaked.
In North America — the United States, Canada and Mexico — transmission was also widespread but had declined substantially in all three countries, as it had largely in South and Central America and the Caribbean.
In East Asia — China, Japan and Taiwan — transmission also appeared to be declining, the WHO said.
22 dead from measles in Zimbabwe
From CNN, in its entirety:
Harare, Zimbabwe — Twenty-two people, mainly children below the age of 5, have died of measles in Zimbabwe, the country’s state media reported.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said two weeks ago it was “deeply frustrated” by the measles outbreak, which came after it sponsored a vaccination program in the African nation.
WHO’s head in Zimbabwe, Dr. Custodia Mandlhate, told journalists in Harare the outbreak has totaled more than 340 suspected cases this year, and “this is not acceptable.” She said the outbreak came about “mainly because of people who have denied their children vaccination.”
The Herald on Tuesday reported the 22 victims had not been vaccinated, quoting health officials in the troubled country. Ninety cases have been confirmed nationwide, Zimbabwe’s Health and Child Welfare Minister Henry Madzorera told the newspaper.
“This is an unwarranted loss of lives given the fact that measles is a preventable disease,” he said, according to the state-owned Herald. “In Zimbabwe, outbreaks of measles were rare because of sustained high vaccination coverage among all children. It is therefore important for parents to realize that vaccinating their children protects the individual children” from the disease and its complications,” he said.
The outbreak has hit five districts in Zimbabwe, Madzorera said.
It is likely to further strain Zimbabwe’s health system, which last year linked nearly 5,000 deaths to a cholera epidemic. In the past three months, five people have died from cholera, but the WHO said the situation will not be as bad as last year.
