Credit: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
LONDON, Dec 8 2021 (IPS) – Officially reported deaths from started to rise again in autumn 2021 in a number of economies in the . While in advanced economies in Europe the mortality rate has remained low despite the pick-up in Covid-19 cases, in the EBRD regions the mortality and infection rates continued to move in tandem.
Reflecting this, daily Covid-19 deaths per million population were four times higher in the EBRD regions than in advanced Europe as of November 2021.
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The African Storybook Project has developed writing and publishing apps that are promoting literacy. Credit: Saide
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 10 2022 (IPS) – Suwaiba Hassan published an engrossing story. She used digital apps that are giving literacy a boost.
The student from Katsina State in Nigeria, Hassan, won a National Reading Competition for a story she created using the African Storybook reader app and the African Storybook maker app. , an education NGO, developed the apps through its African Storybook (ASb) project.
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Credit: WHO
MADRID, Apr 13 2022 (IPS) – People around the world are unknowingly being exposed to water laced with antibiotics, which could spark the rise of drug-resistant pathogens and potentially fuel another global pandemic, warns a new report.
The , elaborated by the United Nations Environment Programme (), found that, globally, not enough attention is being focused on the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance with most antibiotics being excreted into the environment via toilets or through open defecation.
Already in 2015, 34.8 billion daily doses of antibiotics were consumed, with as active substances. Since then the amount of daily consumed …
ROME, Jun 1 2022 (IPS) – Developing countries – in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America and in the Middle East are facing a combination of crises that are unprecedented in recent times. Over the last three years they have had to face the COVID-19 crisis, the food crisis, the energy crisis, the climate change crisis, the debt crisis and, on top of all this, a global recession. The crises have overlapped, and each has added to the problems created by the previous ones.
Daud Khan
First among the crises relates to food – the most basic of human needs. Even before the events in Ukraine there were shortages and uncertainties. International food prices rose by 40% over their level…
With the rise in COVID-19 cases fueled by new variants, the number of long COVID cases will keep increasing. Credit: Unsplash/Ivan Diaz
ABUJA, Sep 1 2022 (IPS) – More than two-years in, the COVID-19 pandemic rages on with rising cases and deaths every day. A silent and more long-term pandemic occurring simultaneously is long COVID. The impact of long COVID has serious consequences for the future of humanity and should worry us all.
The recent by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control shows that an average of 14% of US adults report long COVID symptoms. This is staggering because 93 million cases have been reported in the U.S. This implies that 13 million peop…
Access to PrEP has been slow and mostly limited to high income countries. Some countries, like Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, and Nigeria, have been more proactive than others, but it is still hard for many to get PrEP. Credit: Shutterstock
Nov 30 2022 (IPS) – While the world has focused on the COVID pandemic for nearly three years, less and less attention is being paid to HIV. However, HIV is still a global problem. In 2021, according to the United Nations, people were living with HIV, over 650,000 died from AIDS-related…
“Drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end” Credit: Bigstock.
MADRID, Mar 21 2023 (IPS) – Shockingly, the human suicidal war on Nature not only continues unabated but is also set to become even more virulent. Just to start with, please be reminded that groundwater accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth, according to the 2022.
And that groundwa…
Credit: WHO
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 9 2023 (IPS) – The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (INC-2), held in Paris, France, from May 29 to June 02, 2023, concluded with optimism and the prospect of ending plastics pollution. Over 700 delegates from 169 Member States agreed to prepare a ahead of the third session in November this year.
Among the more important and interesting debates, health advocates attending the negotiations that it was essential to discuss how to categorize the thousands of types of plastics, chemical precursors and products in a way that allows for a coherent approach to ending plastic pollution.
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Antoinette Sayeh is deputy managing director of the IMF, and Ralph Chami is assistant director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development.
Credit: URDEE IMAGE/ZUMA WIRE/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
Jun 4 2020 (IPS) – The COVID-19 pandemic is crippling the economies of rich and poor countries alike. Yet for many low-income and fragile states, the economic shock will be magnified by the loss of remittances—money sent home by migrant and guest workers employed in foreign countries.
Remittance flows into low-income and fragile states represent a lifeline that supports households as well as provides much-needed tax revenue. As of 2018, remittance flows to these countri…
Children study in a Community Based Education class in Miirwais Meena, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Credit: Fazel/UNICEF
LONDON, Nov 12 2020 (IPS) – As if four decades of war were not enough, then came the pandemic.
For each of the past five years, Afghanistan has been identified by the United Nations as the world’s deadliest country for children and, despite progress made in peace talks between the government and the Taliban, child and youth casualties from the ongoing conflict continue to mount in 2020.
Education itself has come under fire, with hundreds of attacks on schools and teachers. A 2018 joint report by the Afghanistan Ministry of…