Millennium Development Goals

Study: More action needed to confront millions of preventable child deaths

kkrisberg — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 15:34:23 +0000

Study: More action needed to confront millions of preventable child deaths

Worldwide, 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 as well. However, complications due to childbirth is now the third most common cause of child death, displacing diarrhea, which still a leading cause of child mortality, killing more children every day than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Since 2000, child deaths due to measles, tetanus, HIV and diarrhea fell the fastest, with about half of the 3.6 million fewer child deaths occurring between 2000–2013 due to reductions in pneumonia, diarrhea and measles fatalities.

“We have seen huge successes, but there is still a long way to go,” said study author Robert Black, a professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a news release. “Millions of children are still dying of preventable causes at a time when we have the means to deliver cost-effective interventions. And if we don’t continue to devote research, resources and attention to the issue of child survival, we are going to lose the battle.”

To calculate the child mortality rates, researchers examined vital statistics records and oral autopsy data and used computer modeling to produce child death estimates for the World Health Organization’s 194 member states. The study found that sub-Saharan Africa is home to the largest burden of child mortality. About half of the 6.3 million child deaths in 2013 happened in sub-Saharan Africa, which is also predicted to be home to 60 percent of child deaths in 2030 if current trends stay the same. Overall, the three leading causes of child death in 2013 were preterm birth complications, pneumonia and intrapartum-related complications (emergencies during childbirth, such as birth asphyxia).

Nearly 52 percent of younger-than-5 deaths were due to infectious causes, with pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria at the top, the study found. The most common causes of neonatal death were preterm birth complications, intrapartum-related complications and neonatal sepsis or meningitis or other infections. The five countries with the highest numbers of children dying before age 5 were India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and China. On a more positive note, southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa were home to the largest reductions in deaths among children younger than 5.

The study notes that the worldwide Millennium Development Goal of reducing the death rate among children younger than 5 by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 remains unmet and if trends stay the same, 4.4 million children will still die from often-preventable causes in 2030. However, if all countries were able to reduce their younger-than-5 mortality rate to 25 deaths per 1,000 live births, the estimated 2030 death rate could be cut nearly in half. The study also noted a “major transition” for child survival highlighted by the fact that preterm birth complications are now the leading cause of younger-than-5 deaths globally. Study authors Black, Li Liu, Shefali Oza, Daniel Hogan, Jamie Perin, Igor Rudan, Joy Lawn, Simon Cousens and Colin Mathers write:

A well-recognized shift is apparent in the timing of child deaths closer and closer to the time of birth. This shift is now happening all over the world, with 44% of child deaths in the neonatal period. Africa is the region with the lowest proportion of death in the neonatal period, partly because of specific postnatal and child causes, notably malaria and HIV. This shift is indicative of progress in reductions of infection deaths for children, and slow progress for neonatal mortality reduction and particularly preterm birth, for which prevalence is rising in many countries; even simple care is often scarce.

Scaling up health care services for newborns and to prevent preterm birth seem to be significant components of reducing global child death rates and though that’s a complex and multifaceted endeavor, the study notes that there are easy, low-cost places to begin. For example, a method known as “kangaroo mother’s care,” in which the newborn is placed on the mother’s chest to improve breathing and stabilize body temperature, costs nothing to implement and yet isn’t as widely used as it should be. Moving toward the future, the authors write that “disease-specific interventions are only part of the solution” — they also call for socioeconomic interventions, such as widening access to family planning services, which improves maternal health, and creating more opportunities for women’s education and socioeconomic development.

“Going forward, it’s going to be harder and harder to make the kind of headway we have seen in child deaths,” said lead study author Liu, an assistant professor in the departments of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, and International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We have gone after some low-hanging fruit, but even in those areas there is still so much room for improvement. More, not fewer, resources are needed.”

To read the full child mortality study, visit the Lancet.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.

kkrisberg Fri, 10/03/2014 - 11:34

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Millennium Development Goals

“Study: More action needed to confront millions of preventable child deaths”?

Here’s an idea that would have saved over 50 million children’s lives: ban abortion.

World Water Day 2012: Food security challenges and drinking water progress

lborkowski — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:06:32 +0000

World Water Day 2012: Food security challenges and drinking water progress

Today 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 sustainable diets.

Climate change is making it even harder to reach the goal of ensuring adequate food and water for all. "To the extent that climate change increases the variability of rainfall and increases the frequency of extreme weather events, it will hinder food security," explains a UN Food and Agriculture Organization fact sheet. Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns may benefit agriculture in some areas but will harm it in others; FAO predicts that China could increase its cereal production by 100 million tonnes, but India will likely lose 30 million tonnes of cereal and Mozambique could lose 25% of its agricultural productive capacity.

While the outlook for water in agriculture is disturbing, water advocates got some good news this month about drinking water.

One of the targets of the "Ensure Environmental Sustainability" Millennium Development Goal is "Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation." (Background on Millennium Development Goals is here.) Earlier this month, the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation released its 2012 update report and announced that the drinking water target has been met ahead of schedule. Over the past two decades, more than two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, which include household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, and rainwater collection.

Access to improved drinking water is important for reducing water-related diseases, which kill more than three million people each year. It can also reduce the time people have to spend collecting water -- and since women and girls do most of this work, the time savings can help them achieve education and other goals and lead to reductions in gender inequality.

These gains still need to be expanded: 783 million people still lack access to safe drinking water, and 40% of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. It will also take work to ensure that the people who've gained access to improved drinking water are able to maintain it.

It's also troubling that the world is not on track to achieve the sanitation target. The Joint Monitoring Programme reports that 2.5 billion people still lack improved sanitation. (Here's more on what constitutes improved sanitation and why it can be hard to achieved.) Water and sanitation are part of the same target for a reason: human waste can contaminate drinking water supplies if not handled properly. Failing to achieve sanitation goals can prevent people from getting the full benefit of improved drinking water supplies.

This World Water Day is both a celebration of an achievement and a reminder that we still have a long way to go before everyone has the water, sanitation, and food needed to live healthy lives.

lborkowski Thu, 03/22/2012 - 07:06

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Clean Water for a Healthy World

lborkowski — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:04:19 +0000

Clean Water for a Healthy World

Liz 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 indirectly from malnutrition arising from repeated diarrhea or intestinal nematodes. Many malnourished children do survive, but can suffer lifelong impairment.

Some of the most common neglected tropical diseases, which cause widespread impairment in developing countries, are water-related. Trachoma, which causes eye inflammation and is transmitted as a result of inadequate hygiene, affects more than 80 million people worldwide and has left eight million of them blind. Schistosomiasis, which spreads through water bodies contaminated with infected persons' feces, causes progressive damage to either the bladder and kidneys or the liver, spleen, and intestines. WHO estimates that 200 million people have this preventable infection.

Because water-related diseases cause such a great reduction in quality of life and productivity, they're a focus on the UN Millennium Development Goals. Under Goal Seven, "Ensure Environmental Sustainability," one of the targets is "Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation." The world has achieved substantial progress toward this goal, but it's been uneven.

The most recent UN report on MDG progress finds that in 2006 we were ahead of schedule in meeting the 2015 drinking water target, but less than halfway toward the sanitation target. Worldwide, 884 million people still lack access to improved water sources (which include household connections, public standpipes, and protected wells), and 84% of these people are in rural areas.

Sanitation improvements must go hand-in-hand with water improvements, because human waste can contaminate water if not handled properly. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization gives this definition of improved sanitation:

Access to improved sanitation facilities refers to the percentage of the population with at least adequate excreta disposal facilities (private or shared, but not public) that can effectively prevent human, animal, and insect contact with excreta. Improved facilities range from simple but protected pit latrines to flush toilets with a sewerage connection. To be effective, facilities must be correctly constructed and properly maintained.

Improved

connection to a public sewer

connection to a septic system

pour-flush latrine

simple pit latrine

ventilated improved pit latrine

Not improved

service or bucket latrines (where excreta are manually removed)

shared and public latrines

latrines with an open pit

Between 1990 and 2006 in the developing world, 1.1 billion people gained access to improved sanitation - but 1.4 billion more still need to gain access by 2015 in order to meet the target. The problem is particularly acute in Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been notable but not equal to the substantial challenge.

While we in the developing world can and should support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, we also need to think about how our activities are affecting water quality. The World Water Day website has this summary of some of the top concerns:

Water quality can be affected by organic loading (e.g. sewage), pathogens including viruses in waste streams from humans and domesticated animals, agricultural runoff and human wastes loaded with nutrients (e.g. nitrates and phosphates) that give rise to eutrophication and oxygen stress in waterways, salinization from irrigation and water diversions, heavy metals, oil pollution, synthetic and persistent engineered chemicals (e.g. plastics and pesticides), medical drug residues and hormone mimetics and their by-products, radioactive pollution, and even thermal pollution from industrial cooling and reservoir operations.

If you're interested in learning more about water pollution problems in the US, I recommend the Frontline documentary Poisoned Waters. The World Water Day website also has plenty of suggested reading.

On World Water Day, think about the ways you use water - and how much a clean, adequate supply means to the health of the world.

lborkowski Fri, 12/31/2010 - 05:04

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Blog Action Day: Water for the World

lborkowski — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:00:02 +0000

Blog Action Day: Water for the World

Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers around the world write about an important global topic. This year, the focus is on water.

Water
When considering whether drinking water is safe, the WHO defines it this way:

Access to safe drinking water is the proportion of people using improved drinking water sources: household connection; public standpipe; borehole; protected dug well; protected spring; rainwater.

Earlier this year, the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) reported that in 1990, 77% of the world's population got drinking water from an improved source, and in 2008 that figure had risen to 87%. That progress puts us well within reach of the MDG target for water -- 88.5% by 2015, by my calculation -- but it still leaves a large swath of the global population without access to safe drinking water. According to the JMP, 884 million people still get their water from unimproved sources (which include rivers and ponds, unprotected wells, and water sold in bottles or from tanker trucks). More than one-third of those still lacking access to improved water sources live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As I wrote last month's post about the Millennium Development Goals, improving gender equality can have a strong multiplier effective and enhance several other MDGs. (Sharon Astyk of Casaubon's Book posted a response to the post that's well worth reading.) In the case of water, inadequate water supplies can also hamper efforts to achieve gender parity in education. In areas where people have to walk long distances to collect water, it's usually women and girls who make the daily treks - and when girls are spending hours hauling water, that's time they can't spend in school.

So, while water quality is one of the important considerations, it's not the only one. The MDG also addresses people's access to water, and WHO puts numbers on that:

Access to drinking water means that the source is less than 1 kilometer away from its place of use and that it is possible to reliably obtain at least 20 litres per member of a household per day.

A kilometer is equal to slightly more than half a mile, and 20 litres is about 5.3 gallons. To put that into context, EPA reports that the average US family of four can use 400 gallons of water each day.

Sanitation
Sanitation improvements must go hand-in-hand with water improvements, because human waste can contaminate water if not handled properly. (See this post on sanitation for details.)

An "improved" sanitation facility is defined as "adequate excreta disposal facilities (private or shared, but not public) that can effectively prevent human, animal, and insect contact with excreta." Toilets connected to public sewer systems or septic systems qualify, as do many latrines. Latrines that use an open pit or require manual removal of excreta don't qualify, nor do public latrines, because they are rarely maintained adequately and may not be accessible at all times.

In 1990, only 54% of the world's population used improved sanitation facilities; the MDG target aims to bring that number up to 77% by 2015. In 2008, however, that number had only reached 61%. The increase represents 1.3 billion people who gained access to improved sanitation facilities between 1990 and 2008, but the JMP estimates that we'll still end up missing the target by one billion people.

Ensuring sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation for the world's population will be especially challenging because water quality worldwide is declining and climate change is disrupting rainfall and glacial melting patterns.

Those of us fortunate enough to have more-than-adequate access to water and sanitation facilities should remember not to take these for granted, and think about how we can reduce our use of the world's finite freshwater supply. National Geographic has a nice list of water conservation tips, and you can find links to many more resources and water-related blog posts at the Blog Action Day website.

lborkowski Fri, 10/15/2010 - 04:00

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Other water-related diseases, like trachoma and schistosomiasis, cause disfigurement and disabilities that harm people's economic participation...

"If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for â business!"

--from Life Without Principle by Henry David Thoreau

UN Millennium Development Goals - i dont believe in here UN MDG this is only tools of US empire to choke the people of this planet specially the poor nation. the only thing that is really happen for the good of the people is finish the unfinish task of making the revolution, so that they can free from the imperialism so that they can implement the radical peoples programs

I as participated in blog action day, but focused my post more on an exhibit I had seen in a museum about water. I find your take on the subject quite interesting. I did not make the connection of water to sanitation, but it makes great sense. Much of our water supply each day is used for sanitation, and the proper disposal of waste. I particularly found the third paragraph in he sanitation section interesting, yet horrible. It shocks me that in 1990 only 54 percent of the world had proper sanitation by means of an easy way to dispose of waste. That is only a little over half the population of the world. What surprises me more, is how the MDG is having difficulty reaching their goal of letting more people have access to sanitation. It seems quite far that they will reach their goal of 77 percent proper sanitation by 2015. The truth is this is an important matter, that needs to be acted upon.

It is very sad that while there many people in this world who still don't have enough clean water to drinks, in some parts of the world, like here over New Zealand, most work offices waste so much money on bottled water.

Still remember last year, when there was Economy crisis, the budget for purified water was cut, so all my coworkers decided to refill water dispensers with tap water, not realising how contaminated it was according to this article about dangers of refilling bottled water http://waterclue.com/bottled-water-brands/water-cooler-bottles.html.

I think the issue about water conservation should be taught to kids at schools more often to raise the awareness of future generation. It might be the most effective way to save the remaining water resource we have.

People and companies need to educate themselves about the environment. Smog alerts in many cases result from not only harmful transportation emissions but also from the output of factories into the air we breathe.

Because of pollution, even our water sources from before are not safe now to drink. Dirty or not purified waters could cause water-related diseases. We should be aware of this problem.

hello Liz
I particularly found the 3rd paragraph in he sanitation section interesting, yet horrible. It shocks me that in 1990 only 54 percent around the globe had proper sanitation by means of a good way to get rid of waste. Measuring only a little over half the populace around the globe. What surprises me more, is the place the MDG is difficulty reaching their goal of letting more and more people get access to sanitation.

Most of this article's stats refer to countries which are regarded as third world, however the issues effect some of the more advanced countries as well. Even in the UK people catch water based diseases from contaminated water supplies and poorly maintained bathroom appliances. http://www.pearceboilersandbathrooms.co.uk are a great local plumber who specialise in fitting and servicing high quality bathrooms.

Global Health 101: Millennium Development Goals

lborkowski — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:12:48 +0000

Global Health 101: Millennium Development Goals

If 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 water or basic sanitation. The goals are:

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
Target 2: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
Target 3: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Target 1: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Target 1: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Target 1: Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Target 1: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
Target 2: Achieve universal access to reproductive health

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Target 1: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
Target 2: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
Target 3: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

Target 1: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources
Target 2: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
Target 3: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
Target 4: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

Target 1: Address the special needs of least developed countries, landlocked countries and small island developing states
Target 2: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
Target 3: Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt
Target 4:In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
Target 5: In cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

Uneven Progress
This week, a UN summit on the MDGs is taking place in New York. The New York Times' Neil McFarquhar reports that there hasn't been enough progress to put the world on track to achieving the targets:

Yet despite broad if sporadic progress, the United Nations acknowledges that only two of the many targets might actually be met: cutting in half the number of people who lack safe drinking water and halving the number of people who live on $1.25 or less daily.

Any progress is widely welcomed, of course, but experts warn that even those achievements may disguise the fact that some of the poorest countries are making considerably less headway, or even becoming worse off.

Because the goals concentrate on global averages, China skews the statistics on earnings because its roaring economy has lifted millions out of poverty since 1990, the baseline year on which all the goals are set.

Looking at nations individually makes for a much more complicated portrait. In Nigeria, the ranks of people living on less than $1.25 a day jumped to 77 percent of the population in 2008 from 49 percent in 1990, for example, while in Ethiopia it was reduced to 16 percent from 60 percent, according to a new report from the Overseas Development Institute, a British research group.

Similarly, Ghana cut hunger by 75 percent by 2004, but the problem more than doubled in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the same period.

A UN Development Programme assessment published in June puts more emphasis on what's been achieved, but also describes the unevenness of progress:

There have been noticeable reductions in poverty globally. Significant improvements have been made in enrolment and gender parity in schools. Progress is evident in reducing child and maternal mortality; increasing HIV treatments and ensuring environmental sustainability. While there are welcome developments in the global partnership, where some countries have met their commitments, others can do more.

At the same time that the share of poor people is declining, the absolute number of the poor in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is increasing. Countries that achieved rapid reductions in income poverty are not necessarily making the same progress in gender equality and environmental sustainability. Lack of progress in reducing HIV is curtailing improvements in both maternal and child mortality. Moreover, attention to the quality of education and health services may have suffered in the rush to extend coverage.

One of the benefits of measuring global progress toward specific MDG targets is that it allows for comparisons between countries' strategies and results. (Although the assessments aren't as rigorous as some would wish - McFarquhar quotes MIT's Esther Duflo criticizing a lack of understanding of what works.) The UNDP assessment highlights some successful strategies, including large-scale immunization campaigns and conditional cash transfer programs (see this recent Economist report for more on CCTs). It also notes that locally developed strategies that are based on a broad national consensus and take into account the voices of the poorest and most marginalized are most likely to lead to sustainable achievements.

At the same time, the assessment suggests that progress on hunger will remain inadequate if we can't improve global agricultural productivity and address (Der Spiegel has a special report on this topic), and we urgently need to strengthen climate-change adaptation and risk-reduction capacities in countries exposed to national disasters.

The Importance of Equality
While all of the targets interact with one another to some degree, the UNDP assessment reports that improving gender equality has a strong multiplier effect. While the world hasn't managed to eliminate gender disparity in education in primary and secondary schools (the sole target for Goal 3), by 2008 there were 96 girls per 100 boys enrolled in schools, up from 91 in 1999. This is likely to have a positive impact on several other MDG targets:

Ensuring girls have unfettered access to health, education and productive assets helps progress across the MDGs. Increased female school enrolment is associated with better health and nutritional intake of families. Enhancing reproductive and maternal health contributes across the MDG goals. Equitable provision of land and agricultural inputs significantly increases output and ensures food security. Constitutional and legal reforms enhance women's empowerment and increase their political participation. Providing infrastructure to households with energy sources and water reduces the burden of domestic activities and frees girls to attend school, engage in self employment or participate in labour markets.

And:

In many countries, transactional sex, social norms that disempower women and domestic violence are among the causes of HIV infection. Birth rates are likely to be lower in households where women are empowered, which, in turn, is associated with better health and education for children.

The push for gender equality may get a boost with the recent creation of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women; last week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, to head it.

Gender isn't the only source of inequality, of course, and UNICEF has urged a greater focus on the most disadvantaged children over the next five years. In their Narrowing the Gap to Meet the Goals report, UNICEF provides evidence that such a focus is not only right in principle, but could allow for more lives to be saved per million spent. UNICEF's equity-focused approach model includes three key measures: upgrading selected facilities (especially for maternal and newborn care), and expanding maternity services; overcoming barriers (like user charges) that prevent the poorest from using already-available services; and increasing the use of community outreach and involvement, such as using more community health workers to deliver basic services outside of facilities.

Financial Commitments
Earlier today, Secretary-General Ban urged heads of state attending the UN summit to "provide the necessary investment, aid and political will to end extreme poverty." From the news release, it looks like he focused on urging countries to honor their previous commitments on development assistance, rather than asking for increased commitments. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, however, has already announced that his country will boost its aid contributions by 20% over the next three years (France currently donates 10 billion euros per year), and he also proposed a small international tax on financial transactions to fund development efforts.

I can't find anything recent on the White House website about the US involvement in the summit or the broader MDG effort, but I hope President Obama will soon make an announcement about how the US will support the global effort to meet MDG targets.

lborkowski Mon, 09/20/2010 - 11:12

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While your goals may indeed be noble I'm afraid you will never achieve them unless we find a way to tackle the thorny dilemma of population growth on a resource limited and finite planet. Unfortunately it seems that humans are not much smarter than yeast nor do they have a very good grasp as to the consequences of the exponential function.

We are currently in population and ecological overshoot due to the easy access we have had to fossil fuel over the last 200 hundred or so years. This has been the basis of our entire civilization and it fueled the so called green revolution, possibly one of the worst things that ever happened to humanity. We are now at or very near peak oil and the piper will need to be paid.

I could cite many areas of study and the works of myriad scholars as to why I think this, but perhaps this relatively short paper might help to clarify the fundamental problem.

http://www.bioinfo.rpi.edu/bystrc/pub/pimentel.pdf

HUMAN POPULATION NUMBERS AS A FUNCTION
OF FOOD SUPPLY
RUSSELL HOPFENBERG1,â and DAVID PIMENTEL2

As women's education level increases, fertility rates tend to decrease - so, achieving the MDG of promoting gender equality and empowering women will likely help slow the rate of population growth.

Since resource strains aren't just a function of how many people there are but how much we're each consuming, it's also essential to reduce the kind of excessive consumption we have here in the US.

"Since resource strains aren't just a function of how many people there are but how much we're each consuming, it's also essential to reduce the kind of excessive consumption we have here in the US."

I agree completely with that statement, I just spent some time traveling in Germany, Austria and Hungary... I'm quite convinced that it is possible to live quite well with significantly reduced consumption as compared to US standards.

"As women's education level increases, fertility rates tend to decrease - so, achieving the MDG of promoting gender equality and empowering women will likely help slow the rate of population growth."

While this is something that is often stated, whether or not it is actually a significant factor in actually reducing global population is something on which the scientific jury still seems to be out.

http://www.populationpress.org/essays/essay-myths4.html

"There is a need for more research on the relationship between various aspects of women's status and fertility rates. In his 1991 study of comparative reproductive preferences, Charles Westoff of Princeton University's Office of Population Research found,

"The relationship between education and the percentage of women who want no more children is positive in several of the countries, but weak or non-existent in many others. In fact, [the data] give the general impression that the intention to terminate childbearing is similar across educational levels...There is little evidence to support any strong pattern of diffusion or differential penetration of norms of family limitation across educational levels or from urban to rural areas. (pp. 5-6)

Abernethy (1993 correspondence) raises some interesting issues:

"Raising women's legal, health, and social status, and providing women with educational opportunity are very worthwhile objectives in themselves. Nevertheless, only correlational data link these factors to fertility decline. On the contrary, participation in the labor market, particularly if a woman's earnings make a significant contribution to family income, appears to significantly affect family size targets: Penn Handwerker and Diane Macunovich have found in Third World countries and the United States, respectively, that women prefer and have fewer children when child rearing carries an opportunity cost."

The 'population growth' canard is what it is ... a canard ... and is used to stop all reasonable discussion or to be counterproductive in the "Apollo Moon Hoax" sense. Population growth is a carefully phrased synonym for making "those people" (whoever they are, but mostly brown skinned) to stop existing.

I'm sure some people use the population growth argument in a counterproductive way, but that doesn't mean finite natural resources aren't a legitimate concern. The important thing to remember is that resource use per person is part of the equation - so those of us who are using more than we need are making it harder for the planet to support a growing population.

@ Douglas Watts,

I'm sure the airborne brown yeast floating in from the sky into a vat already populated by a blooming population of white yeast will both suffer exactly the same consequences of population crash. This will happen either because their food, sugar, is all consumed or the amount of alcohol they produce will rise to a point where it becomes toxic and poisons them.

Population growth follows natural laws, it is no more a 'canard' than the laws of thermodynamics or gravity.

For the record, I understand your reaction to my comment. This topic is taboo in polite company, unfortunately it doesn't change reality just because we choose to ignore it.

What we need is deeper understanding of the issues involved based on dispassionate scientific analysis.

All these wonderfull objectives are great. No one can be against virtue.

But we do have a core problem, us who are the richest countries in the worlds and the mightiest military in action all over the world.

We are loosing year after year our Morality.

The Indispensable People?
The Collapse of Western Morality
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.

In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israelâs genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.

I donât mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.

And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.

more at
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts09242010.html

Lets fix this problem, let regulate these behavior either individuals or collectives, lets put our armies to the service of virtue and we should succeed.

Thank you

Snowy Owl

Advice to the G8: Reducing Maternal and Child Mortality

lborkowski — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:47:56 +0000

Advice to the G8: Reducing Maternal and Child Mortality

Officials 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 highlights several specific health issues that greatly affect progress toward these goals:

Maternal mortality and morbidity - A woman in the poorest parts of the world has a one in seven risk of dying as a result of pregnancy or childbirth during her lifetime.
Perinatal and neonatal death - Each year, 4 million babies die in the first month of life.
Family planning - "Provision of effective contraception for approximately 200 million women who have none would prevent 23 million unplanned births, 22 million induced abortions and 14,000 pregnancy-related deaths each year."
Child illness - For children between the ages of one month and five years, the main causes of death are pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles and HIV.
Maternal and child undernutrition - More than 10% of the global disease burden is attributed to maternal and child undernutrition.
HIV and AIDS - More than half of the HIV-infected children who don't get treatment die before age two.
Gender issues and women's rights - "Regions with high maternal death rates are characterized by disenfranchisement and marginalization of women."
Deficiencies in knowledge translation - A lack of sufficient research funding and personnel in developing countries limits the extent to which health programs are evidence-based and benefit from other areas' implementation experiences.

The scientific institutions then call on the G8 countries to increase funding for maternal and child health, with an emphasis on strengthening health facilities so they can provide increased access to prenatal, midwifery, essential obstetric, and newborn care. They urge access to family planning services integrated with HIV/AIDS prevention services, and policies "which protect women and children from all forms of abuse, injury, exploitation and violence." They also promote better coordination of initiatives on women and children's health and strengthening of research in this area, especially in knowledge translation.

If support for these facilities and services does increase, developing countries will need more health workers to administer the programs - but clinicians trained in developing countries often move to developed countries. The statement also addresses this issue:

Health workforce strategies need to include plans to build a cadre of skilled birth attendants and community health workers to care for pregnant women and children. Developing countries should establish incentive programs to retain clinical staff trained internally and repatriate former staff. Developed countries should be discouraged from actively recruiting trained individuals in healthcare from developing countries and encouraged to form health education partnerships.

We tend to think of funding decisions being the main way that G8 countries' decisions affect countries with high rates of maternal and child mortality, but we also have to consider other ways our actions shape health around the world.

lborkowski Fri, 05/28/2010 - 08:47

Tags

Public Health - General

child mortality

maternal mortality

Millennium Development Goals

Until the marginalization of women and children ends, these citizens have little hope of improving their lot in their communities. The majority of health care workers are women. Until they can have reliable and safe opportunities to advance their education to become providers in their communities, who will stay in those communities, not much will change and all around them will suffer.