Health & Well Being

Photo: Kenyan Senator Isaac Mwaura. Source: Standard Digital

What a Kenyan Senator Attending UN Meeting Experienced in US

By Isaac Mwaura

The writer is a Nominated Senator and chairman of the Albinism Society of Kenya. @mwauraIsaac1 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This article was first published in Standard Digitial.

NEW YORK (IDN) – It is Wednesday September 25, 2019, and I am rushing to take my seat at a Kenyan side event on peace, organised by our permanent mission in New York and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was during the United Nations General Assembly meeting. I get into the building and check in at security.

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 08 October 2019

Photo: Ayurveda spas are common in Sri Lanka, and some functions as home-based income generating activity. CC BY 4.0

Ayurveda Could Provide Affordable ‘Health for All’

Viewpoint by Manish Uprety*

NEW DELHI (IDN) – The quest for a healthy life has been an eternal one. In 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration expressed the need for urgent action by all governments, health and development workers, and the world community to protect and promote the health of all people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) launched its "Health For All" campaign and defined Health for All as the attainment by all peoples of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and economically productive life. However, almost two decades later, this goal still eludes many, especially in the developing countries.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 26 September 2019

Image credit: Dominic Chavez, World Bank.

Up to 5 Billion People Could Miss Out on Health Care in 2030

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – Time is running out for countries to achieve the global goal of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). A new report warns that if current trends continue, up to 5 billion people will still be unable to access health care in 2030 – the deadline world leaders have set for achieving universal health coverage. Most of those people are poor and already disadvantaged.

: Santo D. Banerjee; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 22 September 2019

Financing Gap of Trillions of Dollars to Achieve 17 SDGs

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – Although significant progress has been made since the adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in 2015, recent data confirm that the world is not on track to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This includes the slow pace at which the financing gap for the SDGs – amounting to trillions of dollars – is being filled.

This in turn is adversely affecting financing, which is the thread that connects many of the priorities from advances on climate action to universal health coverage to the SDGs and small island developing States.

: Santo D. Banerjee; UN INSIDER; 09 September 2019

Photo: An unidentified fisherman. Credit: Juma Mtanda.

Sex Bait Threatens Women’s Lives in Much of Africa

By Kizito Makoye

LUDEWA, Tanzania (IDN) – It’s almost midday in Nsisi – a fishing village nestled on the shore of Lake Nyasa – and Lucy Gwamaka is busy unfurling a canvas to dry her sardines in the sun.

For the 33-year-old mother of three, life is a daily struggle. Her wrinkled face and sun-parched skin makes her look older than her age.

Distraught and cash-strapped, Gwamaka has been grappling to make ends meet ever since her husband died four years ago after a short battle with malaria.

: Africa & ME Editor; Afrca; 05 September 2019

Photo: Cover of ‘The Disaster Riskscape Across Asia-Pacific: Pathways for resilience, inclusion and empowerment’. Credit: ESCAP

Asia-Pacific Faces a Daunting Spectrum of Natural Hazards

New UN Report Warns of Huge Economic Losses

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI | BANGKOK (IDN) – Vulnerable and marginalized communities are among the hardest hit by natural disasters that occurred in a relentless sequence in Asia and the Pacific in the past two years, beyond what the region had previously experienced or was able to predict. This, according to the latest report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), is “a sign of things to come in the new climate reality” where economic losses are set to quadruple.

: Devinder Kumar; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 23 August 2019

Collage of photos of Sierra Leone's octahedral diamond crystal and chromite – from Wikimedia Commons.

Diamonds Leave Sierra Leone Villagers Poor and Sick

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Since the first diamonds were found in the 1930s, the villagers of Kono, in the eastern region of Sierra Leone, have seen the wealth under their feet make others rich. Instead of joy, the shiny stones have left a trail of contaminated water, pockmarked mud brick houses, and countless other indignities.

Adi Kalie Bangura, a traditional healer, showed a reporter the black welts that dot his arms and legs as a result of drinking and bathing in poisoned water.

Sierra Leone is one of Africa’s leading diamond producers by value.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 20 August 2019

Photo: UN AIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. Credit. UNAIDS

New UNAIDS Chief Winnie Byanyima Has an Ambitious Target

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) – “The end of AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 is a goal that is within the world’s reach, but I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge ahead,” says Winnie Byanyima, the new Executive Director of UNAIDS. Working with all UNAIDS partners, she will continue to speak up for the people left behind and champion human rights as the only way to end the epidemic.

The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, appointed Byanyima as the UNAIDS head and UN Under-Secretary-General “following a comprehensive selection process” that involved a search committee constituted by members of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board. The UNAIDS Committee of Cosponsoring Organizations made the final recommendation on the appointment to the Secretary-General.

: Jaya Ramachandran; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 20 August 2019

Photo: Chinese trucks which bring goods to local markets. Credit for all photos: Bagymdat Atabaeva

Chinese Mining Company in Kyrgyzstan Suspected of Playing Havoc with Ecology

By Bagymdat Atabaeva

SOLTON SARY, Kyrgyzstan (IDN) – On August 5 about 300 villagers from Solton Sary area, about 200 km from capital Bishkek, gathered at the Chinese owned Zhong Ji mining company’s office here to protest against gold mining works, which they claimed were killing their cattle. Thus, another mining scandal has erupted in Kyrgyzstan, where most people make a living on raising livestock.

Locals claim the mining company is contaminating their soil on which the cattle and sheep graze. “We have lost about a hundred sheep last month, we are pretty sure that the meat is contaminated and cannot be used as sheep are just dying out and it’s suspicious,” a local activist and a shepherd Osmonov K told IDN.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; CENTRAL ASIA; 19 August 2019

Photo: Interethnic violence has ravaged Ituri Province in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since December 2108, generating significant population movements within the province, and towards neighbouring Uganda. Credit: UNICEF/Madjiangar

DR Congo Violence Survivors Highlight Armed Militia Brutality

By Kwame Buist

GENEVA (IDN) – Two months since hundreds of thousands of people fled violence in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), UN humanitarians have warned that armed militia continue to make their safe return impossible.

Briefing journalists in Geneva on August 16, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch said that staff had heard numerous testimonies from people whose family members had been killed in Ituri province.

Severe underfunding for aid work and insecurity involving the Hema and Lendu groups have meant that increasing numbers are vulnerable and unable even to go home to pick up essentials, he added.