For centuries, indigenous peoples throughout the world relied on hunting, farming, and fishing for their subsistence. Today, many traditional foods have become life-threatening dangers, contaminated by pollutants and pesticides. Over 355,000 people are poisoned every year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill. Andrea Carmen comes from a Yaqui Indian community in northern [...]
Every year, approximately 360,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth. Up to two million infants die within the first day of life. This is largely because there is a lack of access to well-trained health care, according to the United Nations. In an effort to reduce pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths around the world, the United [...]
Already reeling from years of famine and civil war, another disaster now threatens East Africa: a new variety of cassava virus is devastating the region’s primary food crop. Without urgent action, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warns that the disease is in imminent danger of becoming an epidemic. A sustainable solution will necessitate [...]
It has been a year and a half since the earthquake devastated Haiti. The humanitarian response has saved millions of lives but hundreds of thousands of people are still homeless and in desperate need of basic amenities. “Around 600,000 people displaced by the earthquake are still living in camps and are dependent on humanitarian aid [...]
Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest coverage for access to sanitation services worldwide, with more than 70 percent of the population still lacking access to toilets and hand-washing facilities. In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set the target of reducing by half the number of people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015. If current [...]
For South Sudanese, surges of hope are being met with sobering realities in the wake of independence. The maternal mortality rate in the newest African nation is estimated at more than 2,000 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 births, the highest in the world. “In South Sudan, a woman has a bigger chance of dying during childbirth [...]
GULU, UGANDA – After getting married at 18, Alice Ongom, 45, settled down in Gulu, a northern Ugandan city that was home to much of the bloodshed during the country’s civil war. But after giving birth to five daughters, her in-laws worried she couldn’t give her husband a male heir. “All my in-laws hated me and told [...]
More than one billion people live with some form of disability, including 93 to 150 million children, according to a recent report released by the World Health Organization and the World Bank. These numbers are expected to increase, especially in countries where patterns of disability are influenced by health and environmental factors, as well as [...]
A recent study has linked environmental factors to the outbreak of cholera, offering ways to alleviate the devastating effects of the disease
As the worst of the flooding in Pakistan subsides, aid and assistance slowly begins to reach the millions displaced by the flood. But unless humanitarian relief effort moves faster, 100,000 of the country’s pregnant women expected to give birth this month may not receive medical care they need.
In a bid to increase awareness of the challenges facing the world’s poorest countries, the United Nations has partnered with MediaGlobal to assist newspaper editors, broadcasters, and owners of media companies in advancing human development by featuring stories that raise international awareness of issues of poverty, disease, and hunger in the most vulnerable countries.
The Global Media Compact aims to assist newspaper editors, broadcasters, and owners of media companies in advancing human development by featuring stories that raise international awareness of issues of poverty, disease, and hunger in the most vulnerable countries in Africa. READ MORE
Recent Comments