The Making of an Alcoholic
Friday, July 20, 2018
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Friday, July 13, 2018
Thursday, July 12, 2018
India is no longer home to the largest number of poor people in the world. Nigeria is.
By Joanna Slater, Washington Post, July 10, 2018
It is a distinction that no country wants: the place with the most people living in extreme poverty.
For decades, India remained stubbornly in the top spot, a reflection of its huge population and its enduring struggle against poverty.
Now new estimates indicate that Nigeria has knocked India out of that position, part of a profound shift taking place in the geography of the world’s poorest people.
According to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, Nigeria overtook India in May to become the country with the world’s highest number of people living in extreme poverty, which is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. The threshold captures those who struggle to obtain even basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing, and takes into account differences in purchasing power between countries.
The Brookings report was based on estimates generated by the World Poverty Clock, a model created to track progress against poverty in real time. As of Monday, its figures showed that India had 70.6 million people living in extreme poverty, while Nigeria had 87 million.
What’s more, the gap is widening: The number of people living in extreme poverty in India is falling while the opposite is true in Nigeria, where the population is growing faster than its economy. Extreme poverty rises in Nigeria by six people each minute, according to calculations by the World Poverty Clock. Meanwhile, the number of extreme poor in India drops by 44 people a minute.
“It’s a good news story for India, coupled with some caveats, and it’s a real wake-up call for the African continent,” said Homi Kharas, director of the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution.
Extreme poverty is increasingly an African phenomenon, the Brookings report noted. Africans make up about two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor, it said. By 2030, that figure could rise to nine-tenths if current trends continue.
Africa’s central place in the battle against poverty comes amid dramatic progress worldwide. Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen more than 60 percent, according to the World Bank. Much of the reduction has come in Asia, first in places such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam, and more recently in India.
Dennis Edwards: When I went to Mozambique in 2000 I visited the work of the Sisters of Charity outside of Maputo. Travelling over to Mother Teresa's work we noticed it was very close to the city dump. Arriving at the project we delivered the food stuffs we had bought and spent a few hours with the children playing games, singing, and even teaching sight words in English. After a while we helped one of the workers bring the some 50 small babies out of their baby beds onto the patio for some fresh air and sunlight.
The problem was the flies. Being close to the dumpster there were thousand of flies. But the reason the project was close to the dumpster was because the city dump was used to abandom unwanted babies. Those who worked picking through the garbage for valuables would find the abandomed babies and bring them to Mother Teresa's home nearby. I picked up one of the babies in my arms to keep the flies away, but the others just lay there, flies all over their faces. I felt frustrated and helpless. They needed to build some kind of screen to keep the flies out like they had done in the canteen area.
I remember coming back to Portugal and wondering what I could do to help. My friend with money had just spent $10,000 on a project in another African nation, so I couldn't ask him. I didn't know how I could raise the money for the screen project. Instead of getting desparate for an answer and seeking God to supply, I let myself get busy with a little here and a little there until the conviction of heart, that I needed to do something about that situation, went away. That's what I did to help. I forgot about it.
I had arrived in Maputo with $4,000, but had already donated it to a local group of Christian volunteers led by a couple I had met when I was in Japan. It was with them I had come to visit Mother Teresa's home in the outskirts of Maputo. We had also donated clothes and designer sports shoes and food stuffs to the former street children at the local Anglican Church Center for Street Children in downtown Maputo. We took the boys for different activities and a restaurante, also.
But all that, didn't alleviate the feeling of my conscience. Looking back, I'm ashamed at my lethargic attitude, my lack of love and desperation for that sad situation with Mother Teresa's children in Maputo. Hopefully, the Sisters themselves were able to raise the finances they needed and the situation improved. But I lost the opportunity to help. Nevertheless, we learn from our mistakes. I'm trying to do better. Lord, help me to be a better instrument of your love.
Dennis Edwards: When I went to Mozambique in 2000 I visited the work of the Sisters of Charity outside of Maputo. Travelling over to Mother Teresa's work we noticed it was very close to the city dump. Arriving at the project we delivered the food stuffs we had bought and spent a few hours with the children playing games, singing, and even teaching sight words in English. After a while we helped one of the workers bring the some 50 small babies out of their baby beds onto the patio for some fresh air and sunlight.
The problem was the flies. Being close to the dumpster there were thousand of flies. But the reason the project was close to the dumpster was because the city dump was used to abandom unwanted babies. Those who worked picking through the garbage for valuables would find the abandomed babies and bring them to Mother Teresa's home nearby. I picked up one of the babies in my arms to keep the flies away, but the others just lay there, flies all over their faces. I felt frustrated and helpless. They needed to build some kind of screen to keep the flies out like they had done in the canteen area.
I remember coming back to Portugal and wondering what I could do to help. My friend with money had just spent $10,000 on a project in another African nation, so I couldn't ask him. I didn't know how I could raise the money for the screen project. Instead of getting desparate for an answer and seeking God to supply, I let myself get busy with a little here and a little there until the conviction of heart, that I needed to do something about that situation, went away. That's what I did to help. I forgot about it.
I had arrived in Maputo with $4,000, but had already donated it to a local group of Christian volunteers led by a couple I had met when I was in Japan. It was with them I had come to visit Mother Teresa's home in the outskirts of Maputo. We had also donated clothes and designer sports shoes and food stuffs to the former street children at the local Anglican Church Center for Street Children in downtown Maputo. We took the boys for different activities and a restaurante, also.
But all that, didn't alleviate the feeling of my conscience. Looking back, I'm ashamed at my lethargic attitude, my lack of love and desperation for that sad situation with Mother Teresa's children in Maputo. Hopefully, the Sisters themselves were able to raise the finances they needed and the situation improved. But I lost the opportunity to help. Nevertheless, we learn from our mistakes. I'm trying to do better. Lord, help me to be a better instrument of your love.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials
By Andrew Jacobs, NY Times, July 8, 2018
A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.
Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.
Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.
American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.
When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.
The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.
The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.
Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.
“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.
“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.
In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure–and the Americans did not threaten them.
The State Department declined to respond to questions, saying it could not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The Department of Health and Human Services, the lead agency in the effort to modify the resolution, explained the decision to contest the resolution’s wording but said H.H.S. was not involved in threatening Ecuador.
“The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. “We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.
Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington’s strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Overall, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.
The intensity of the administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.
During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.
The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.
In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.
During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.
The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.
Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said there was a growing fear that the Trump administration could cause lasting damage to international health institutions like the W.H.O. that have been vital in containing epidemics like Ebola and the rising death toll from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the developing world.
“It’s making everyone very nervous, because if you can’t agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?” Ms. Kickbusch asked.
Elisabeth Sterken, director of the Infant Feeding Action Coalition in Canada, said four decades of research have established the importance of breast milk, which provides essential nutrients as well as hormones and antibodies that protect newborns against infectious disease.
A 2016 Lancet study found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.
