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UNITED NATIONS, May 11 2018 (IPS) – While the world’s population has changed dramatically over the last 50 years, little is still understood about fertility transition and the reasons behind it.
Over the last half a century, the global fertility rate has halved, reaching a level of 2.5 births per woman.
At the same time, the UN estimates that there will be 11 billion people in the world by 2100.
Given such trends, more needs to be understood about the factors that influence fe…
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 28 2018 (IPS) – Ministers and senior policymakers across Asia and the Pacific are gathered in Bangkok this week to focus on population dynamics at a crucial time for the region. Their goal: to keep people and rights at the heart of the region’s push for sustainable development. They will be considering how successful we have been in balancing economic growth with social imperatives, underpinned by rights and choices for all as enshrined in the landmark Programme of Action stemming from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, or ICPD.
In the Programme of Action, diverse views on population, gender equality, sexual and reproductive health…
IPS Correspondent Stella Paul interviews DR ARTURO CUNANAN, one of the world’s leading experts on leprosy and Medical Centre Chief of Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital in the Philippines.
Dr. Arturo Cunanan is the Medical Centre Chief of Culion Sanitarium and General Hospital in the Philippines and one of the most experienced experts on Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, in the world today. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
MAJURO, Mar 25 2019 (IPS) – His multiple awards and degrees aside, Dr. Arturo Cunanan is known as a people’s doctor; one who has profound belief in the human rights of every person affected by Hansen’s disease, commonly known …
Zoltán Kálmán is Permanent Representative of Hungary to the Rome-based UN agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP). He was President of the WFP Executive Board in 2018.
ROME, Aug 28 2019 (IPS) – The right to food is a universal human right. Yet, over 820 million people are going hungry, according the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI 2019). In addition, 2 billion people in the world are food insecure with great risk of malnutrition and poor health” 1.
Another report 2 describes the situation even more worrying: “At the global level, one person in three is malnourished today and one in two could be malnourished by 2030 i…
An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
ABUJA, Dec 16 2019 (IPS) – Recently, Madhukar Pai, the Director of McGill University Global Health Program wrote about the . He observed that researches are skewed in favor of the global north. We agree that this inequity exists. However, we also have found that global fellowships such as the Atlantic Fellowship, of which we are both Senior Fellows, are platforms to reverse this inequity, foster international partnerships and amplify voices of devel…
Credit: Pîxabay.
ILLINOIS, United States, Mar 11 2020 (IPS) – Institutions of higher education have a responsibility to lead by example …
Dr PL de Silva is Director, Institute for Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta and Adjunct Professor, Institute for Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
United Nations handing over 250,000 medical masks to Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
NEW YORK, Mar 31 2020 (IPS) – The writing is on the wall for all to see from far and wide – there is nowhere to hide from this invisible enemy, a new coronavirus, maybe with the exception of self-isolation, quarantined at home and even then, we are not 100% safe.
An event of planetary magnitude is currently being visited upon homo sapiens (the so-called ‘…
Mohammad Rafique (right) and other refugee children gathered at the Rohingya market in Kutupalong camp to sell vegetables he brought earlier from a local market in this photo dated Mar. 11, 2020. This was two weeks before Bangladesh went into a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS
Nine-year-old Mohammad Rafique used to collect vegetables from Kutupalong Bazaar and sell them at a market inside Kutupalong camp, a camp of some 600,000 Rohingyas, in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar.
But nowadays he has to stay home with his parents inside their makeshift home built on the slopes of a hill in the sprawlin…
A young boy in Pakistan receives an oral polio vaccine (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
AMSTERDAM, May 6 2020 (IPS) – Interruptions to vaccination programmes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could result in new waves of measles or polio outbreaks, health experts warn.
A growing number of one-off immunisation campaigns and national routine vaccine introductions are being delayed amid social distancing and other measures to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2, leaving millions unprotected.
With both preventive campaigns and routine immunisations impacted, “we’ll have an increasing number of children who will become susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseas…
Ambassador Lois M Young, is Belize’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
NEW YORK, Jul 7 2020 (IPS) – Our world is transfixed by the great human toll and economic impact of the worst global pandemic in a century. For the 65 million inhabitants of small island developing states (SIDS), the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is reminiscent of the worst forms of extreme weather events that SIDS contend with annually. Such events cost lives, undermine our hard-earned development gains, and hamper the aspirations and quality of life of our people. Our governments are routinely compelled to shift alre…