On the right Bruce Wilkinson, President and CEO of CMMB – Healthier Lives Worldwide. Next to him (in the middle) stands Ambassador Mwaba Kasese-Bota, Permanent Representative of the Mission of Zambia to the United Nations, at the CMMB conference on $500 million for the U.N. SDGs, event on March 21. Photo: CMMB
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2016 (IPS) – CMMB Healthier Lives Worldwide– a leading international nonprofit health non-governmental organisation (NGO) – has pledged 500 million dollars to help implement the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals ()– with a specific focus on maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health.
The commitment will be deployed through t…
A high school student in eastern India, studies a leaflet on menstrual hygiene. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, May 27 2016 (IPS) – Around the world girls are struggling to stay in school when their menstrual hygiene needs are forgotten or ignored, yet the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and education sectors have remained reluctant to address the issue.
Menstrual Hygiene Day, celebrated on May 28, aims to raise awareness of the fundamental role that MHM plays in enabling women and girls to reach their full potential in areas such as education.
Globally, 52 percent of the female population, or 26 percent of the total po…
Air pollution in Cairo, Egypt. Credit: World Bank/Kim Eun Yeul ” Source:
ROME, Sep 29 2016 (IPS) – The warning is sharp and the facts, alarming: 92 per cent of the world’s population live in places where levels exceed recommended limits. And 6.5 million people die annually from air pollution.
And the warning comes from the leading United Nations agency dealing with health, which rolled out its most detailed profile of the scourge ever in a bid to slash the deadly toll.
“Fast action to tackle air pollution can’t come soon enough,” the Geneva-based UN World Health Organization () top environmental official Maria Neira on 27 September of th…
Children look for a living in garbage in Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2017 (IPS) – Unhealthy environments both inside and outside the home cause the deaths of more than 1.7 million child under the age of five every year, according to two new reports released by the World Health Organization (WHO) Monday.
Even in their own homes, many children in developing countries have neither clean air to breathe nor clean water to drink, the reports found.
“Almost half of the world’s population is still cooking or heating or lighting their households with very dirty fuels” such as coal or animal dung, Maria Neira, D…
A child from drought-stricken southern Somalia who survived the long journey to an aid camp in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, May 26 2017 (IPS) – World leaders must step up and take action in fighting famine to prevent further catastrophic levels of hunger and deaths, said Oxfam.
Ahead of the 43rd G7 summit, Oxfam urged world leaders to urgently address the issue of famine, currently affecting four countries at unprecedented levels.
“Political failure has led to these crises political leadership is needed to resolve them…the world’s most powerful leaders must now act to prevent a catastro…
Frédéric Mousseau* is Policy Director at the Oakland Institute
Many children under 15 in Zimbabwe discover their HIV status only when they fall critically ill later in life. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, Oct 27 2017 (IPS) – On October 22, 2017, the (WHO) announced that it had removed Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador following outrage and concerns raised by his appointment just two days before.
A article cited WHO member states and activists “who noted that Zimbabwe’s health care system, like many of its public services, has collapsed under Mugabe’s regime.” Another explained “Mugabe, 93, is blamed i…
Sharmila Munda, an illiterate indegenous woman collecting wood for her livelihood. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Sarker / IPS
CHATRA, Bangladesh, Feb 5 2018 (IPS) – Just before sundown on Jan. 30, a group of women day labourers from the Shantal indigenous community are in a rush to wind up their work harvesting potatoes in a field in the village of Boldipukur, some 15 km away from Rangpur district in northern Bangladesh.
One young girl looked indifferent and didn t seem to be in a hurry to go home. When approached by IPS, she gave her name as Rupali Tudu. Her father died of an unidentified disease some six years ago and her mother is depressed and suffers f…
Savio Carvalho is Global Campaigns Director, WaterAid
Six-year-old Mamisoa gathers water at one of the three new fountains in his village in Mangasoavina commune, Madagascar. “I am happy as it is so easy to get water from the tap.” Credit: WaterAid/ Ernest Randriarimalala
LONDON, May 10 2018 (IPS) – They are the foundations of a happy, healthy childhood: good nutrition, health care which includes immunisations and preventative care as well as treatment for illness, a good education.
How many among us would even think to list clean water to drink, a safe place to go to the toilet and the ability to keep hands, bodies and surroundings clean with soap and wat…
is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
Education CS Amina Mohamed chats with form four candidates of Mama Ngina Secondary School a few minutes before KCSE exams. Credit: Standard
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 19 2018 (IPS) – That almost one in five Kenyan teenage girls is a mother represents not only a huge cost to the health sector, but also a betrayal of potential on a shocking scale.
November 20, 2018 marks International Children’s Day. Perhaps a day we should use to reflect on a national crisis of underage pregnancies that confronts us.
Recent media reports of the high number of girls failing to sit their final secondary school examinations (KSCE) only…
Tourists cool off from high temperatures on the beach at the archaeological site of Tulum, in the southeastern Yucatan peninsula, an area of Mexico highly vulnerable to climate change. Powerful hurricanes, storms, drought, heat waves and rising sea levels are climate change effects that impact the mental health of the country’s populati…