Health & Well Being

Photo: Beach adjacent to the University of the South Pacific. Credit: Kim Rabuka.

Fijian Activist Educates Youth on Upcycling Marine Debris

By Kim Rabuka

SUVA (IDN | Wansolwara) — Suzanne Turaganiwai, a marine activist and ocean advocate is educating youths and communities on how to manage waste to keep the environment clean.

The 29-year-old manages the marine debris activism account on Instagram called 'benu ni waitui'.

"It's looking at highlighting the impacts of marine pollution on the environment and also to showcase the different items that wash up here on the beaches in Suva. Also upcycling these items into art and a sort of advocate for the cleaner ocean for Fiji," she told Wansolwara.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 01 July 2022

There’s No Game Like Football

Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene

The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria.

ABUJA (IDN) — Until she asked, I didn't know it was a problem. Her problem, I mean. When people say whatever gets your time and attention gets you, it’s often true.

For as long as I can remember, 36 weeks every year, this thing gets my time and attention.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 01 July 2022

Asia-Pacific: Older Persons as Agents of Development

Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

BANGKOK (IDN) — Older persons are highly visible across Asia and the Pacific: they work in agricultural fields producing our food supplies, peddle their wares as street vendors, drive tuk-tuks and buses, exercise in our parks, lead some of the region’s most successful companies and form an integral part of our families.

: Asia Editor; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 29 June 2022

Image credit: Maurizio de Angelis/Science photo library

WHO Wants New Name For ‘Monkeypox’ Virus

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced plans to find a new name for the viral disease informally known as ‘monkeypox’ which, says the world body, is “discriminatory and stigmatizing”.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a briefing on the matter, said the virus is no longer behaving as it did in the past and therefore should be renamed.

: Global Information Network; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 21 June 2022

Image: Chinese tourists at Koh Samet Beach in Thailand. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne

Tourism in Asia Hard Hit by Three Factors

Ukraine War and Chinese Lockdowns Add Fuel to COVID’s Devastating Blow

Analysis by Mohan Srilal

COLOMBO (IDN) — The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a devastating blow to tourism across Asia that has been a driving force of economic growth, particularly in countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand and Indonesia. Today there’s a trifecta of impacts on the tourism industry in the region first from COVID, then the conflict in Ukraine and lately the lockdowns in China.

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 19 June 2022

Famine is a Policy Choice: The Afterlife of Covid, Institutional decay, and Privatization—Part 2

This is the second in a series of two articles. Click here for Part 1

COLOMBO (IDN) — What was never mentioned in connection with power cuts and soaring fuel and energy prices was the privatization of sale of the Yugadanavi power plant to an American New Fortress company in a corrupt mid-night deal in November 2021 by former US citizen President Rajapakse, before he took wing to New York to address the United Nation’s General Assembly to boast about his green energy and fertilizer policies that had bought Sri Lanka to the current disaster!

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 18 June 2022

Photo: Millions of people globally are on the brink of famine. Credit: WFP/Marwa Awad

Famine Is a Policy Choice: IMF Talks, Geopolitics and Disaster Capitalism—Part 1

Viewpoint by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake *

This is the first in a series of two articles.

Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob
A rain a-fall but the dirt, it tough
A pot a-cook but the food no ‘nough

A hungry man is an angry man
— Bob Marley and the Wailers

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 17 June 2022

Image: Nearly three-fourths of rural India Has a Mobile Connection Now Source: The Better India.

The World Is Not Going to Hell in A Handbasket

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Is the World going to hell in a handbasket? (The etymology of this goes back to Revolutionary France in the eighteenth century when guillotined heads fell into a conveniently placed basket.) No, it is not, despite Covid and despite the worldwide unsettling, brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 14 June 2022

Image: Organizations signing the Joint International Health Statement. Source: IPPNW

Nuclear Weapons Pose the Greatest Immediate Threat to Human Health

By Radwan Jakeem

NEW YORK (IDN) — A Joint International Health Statement for the 1st Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has stressed the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons as a matter of global health and survival. The joint statement expresses a "united voice" of physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and medical students worldwide.

: Radwan Jakeem; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 11 June 2022

We Need More Equality to Go with Fairness

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Plato, the great scholar of Ancient Greece, said that the differences between rich and poor should not exceed a ratio of one to four. In the eighteenth century the influential writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gave birth to the notion of the “Social Contract”, argued that the invention of private property and immoderate accumulation are the origins of great discord among peoples.