Millennium Development Goals
kkrisberg | October 3, 2014Worldwide, the numbers of children who die before their fifth birthdays is on the decline. Still, millions of children are being lost to diseases and complications that are completely preventable.
In a study published earlier this week in the Lancet, researchers examined the reasons behind the 6.3 million deaths among children younger than 5 in 2013 — a number that’s significantly less than the 9.9 million such deaths that occurred worldwide in 2000. Nearly 2 million of the 2013 child deaths were due to complications from preterm birth and pneumonia, both of which were leading causes in 2000…
lborkowski | March 22, 2012Today is World Water Day, and this year's theme is "Water and Food Security." UN Water explains why we should care:
Each of us needs to drink 2 to 4 litres of water every day. But it takes 2 000 to 5 000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food.
Today, there are over 7 billion people to feed on the planet and this number is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
To be able to feed everybody, we first need to secure water, in sufficient quantity and adequate quality.
We will also need to produce more food using less water, reduce food wastage and losses, and move towards more…
lborkowski | December 31, 2010Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we're re-posting some content from our old site.
By Liz Borkowski, originally posted 3/22/10
Today is World Water Day, when the United Nations draws attention to the importance of freshwater and advocates for sustainable water-resource management. This year, the focus is on water quality, which is declining worldwide.
According to the World Health Organization, each year 3.4 million people - most of them children - die from water-related diseases. That includes 1.4 million children dying from diarrhea annually, and 860,000 children perishing directly or…
lborkowski | October 15, 2010Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers around the world write about an important global topic. This year, the focus is on water.
According to the World Health Organization, each year 3.4 million people - most of them children - die from water-related diseases. That includes 1.4 million children dying from diarrhea annually, and 860,000 children perishing directly or indirectly from malnutrition arising from repeated diarrhea or intestinal nematodes. Many malnourished children do survive, but can suffer lifelong impairment. Other water-related diseases, like trachoma and schistosomiasis,…
lborkowski | September 20, 2010If you're working on a major global problem like poverty, it's important to have goals to work towards. Back in 2000, world leaders came together and adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which commits to reducing extreme poverty and sets out a series of goals to be reached by 2015. Each of the eight Millennium Development Goals, as they've come to be known, has between one and five specific targets, many of which involve reducing the proportion (by half, two-thirds, etc.) of people who suffer from a particular condition or lack access to an essential resource like clean drinking…
lborkowski | May 28, 2010Officials from G8 countries will be gathering in Toronto next month, and scientific bodies from the eight countries (e.g., the Royal Society of Canada and US National Academy of Science) have developed a joint statement about what the G8 should do improve the health of women in children. They begin by citing the Millennium Development Goals of reducing under-five child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015; they note that we've seen "some progress in global child health" but the maternal-mortality reduction goal "remains a distant target." The statement…