UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2014 (IPS) – As successive Human Development Reports have shown, most people in most countries are doing better in human development. Globalisation, advances in technology and higher incomes all hold promise for longer, healthier, more secure lives.
But there is also a widespread sense of precariousness in the world today. Improvements in living standards can quickly be undermined by a natural disaster or economic slump. Political threats, community tensions, crime and environmental damage all contribute to individual and community vulnerability.
The 2014 Report, on vulnerability and resilience, shows that human development progress is slowing down and is increasingly precarious. Globalisation, for instance, which has brought benefits to many, has …
Children are bearing the brunt of the drought in Tharparkar, often the first to fall victim to diarrhoea and pneumonia brought on by malnutrition. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS
MITHI, Pakistan, Jan 3 2015 (IPS) – The main entrance to the Civil Hospital in Mithi, headquarters of the Tharparkar district in Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province, is blocked by a couple of men clad in traditional dress and turbans. They are trying to console a woman who is sobbing so heavily she has to gasp for breath.
She lost her two-year-old son just moments ago and these men, both relations of hers, were the ones to carry the child into the hospital where doctors tried – and failed –…
Academics discuss the impacts on health and the environment of the use of glyphosate in Argentine agriculture, during a Dec. 6 conference at the University of Buenos Aires. Concern about this topic is now on the country’s public agenda. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 8 2017 (IPS) – In and around the city of Rosario, where most of Argentina s soybean processing plants are concentrated, a local law banned the use …
Wendell Balderas is Media & Communications Manager of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA)
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 14 2019 (IPS) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision authorizing the sale of Philip Morris International (PMI)’s heated tobacco system, IQOS, in the United States inadvertently puts a foot in the door to increase sales of new tobacco products in the developing world.
In April this year, the FDA authorized the sale of IQOS heated tobacco products in the US. However, it that it has not approved IQOS as a ‘modified risk tobacco product’ (MRTP). But PMI is riding on this ‘US-FDA approved for sale’ of its IQOS as…
The proposed law seeks to provide age appropriate sexual and reproductive health information and services. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS
NAIROBI, Jun 27 2022 (IPS) – The Ministry of Health in Kenya recently that about 700 teenage girls got pregnant daily over a two-month period, in this year alone. What is more is that during this period, 98 adolescent girls betwe…