Geneva, Switzerland, 7 April 2021 (WHO)* — COVID-19 has unfairly impacted some people more harshly than others, exacerbating existing inequities in health and welfare within and between countries. For World Health Day, 7 April 2021, WHO is therefore issuing five calls for urgent action to improve health for all people.
Within countries, illness and death from COVID-19 have been higher among groups who face discrimination, poverty, social exclusion, and adverse daily living and working conditions – including humanitarian crises. The pandemic is estimated to have driven between 119 and 124 million more people into extreme poverty last year.
7 April 2021 (UNEP)* — Aside from the myriad new challenges it introduced, the wide and rapid spread of COVID-19 also revealed long-standing global health inequalities. And while the pandemic may be the most widely publicized example, it is hardly the only case in which those who are already vulnerable bear the brunt of the impact.
6 April 2021 (Wall Street International)* — We should praise Joe Biden for the good decisions that he had made during his first few months in office. He has filled positions in his cabinet with and administration with an ethnically diverse and gender balanced group of people.
For example, we can think of his new Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, who is a Native American. We can also think of his choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate. These decisions are to be applauded.
In Bill Gates’ vision, technology seems fated to fix every single damage that has been inflicted on our planet and climate change has recently been added to the list. But this is the same mentality that has taken us to the devastating stage we currently find ourselves in, while the only thing improving exponentially is the profits of the corporations taking advantage by selling these very technologies.
It is necessary to step out of this technofix hysteria in order to reclaim a holistic vision based on real farmers, healthy and nutritious food, and on an agroecological model that does not impact on climate but, instead, helps to mitigate it. No fake burger can do that.
In this long read, the direct cause of the current economic and environmental threats is shown to have been laid into the foundations of the state
England invests far less in wind turbines than Scotland | Karsten Würth, UnSplash
5 April 2021 (openDemocracy)* — In late 2019, an organism on the edge of life appears to have made the journey from the body of a bat into the bloodstream of a human, and shut down the global economy. Whatever else we may have learned from the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it has taught us that, before anything else, we are biological beings. Our lives and deaths are bound to the beings around us.
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 6 2021 (IPS)* – The 15,900-strong World Bank, which has funded over 12,000 development projects worldwide since 1947, is an international institution with a superlative reputation for its sustained efforts to end poverty in the developing world—with loans, interest-free credit and outright grants.
Credit World Bank
But it has come under heavy fire for its blatant violations of disability rights—an area where no US labour laws are applicable because the Washington-based institution enjoys diplomatic immunity.
5 April 2021 (UN News)* — The aim of the UN-backed COVAX scheme is to get two billion vaccine doses into the arms of around a quarter of the population of poorer countries by the end of 2021. What are the main challenges that need to be overcome, if this historic global effort is to be achieved?
Vaccines are a key part of the solution to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and, since the early stages of the crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) has argued that there needs to be a coordinated approach towards ensuring that everyone, not just people living in rich countries, receives adequate protection from the virus, as it spread rapidly across the world.
I would like to announce the publication of a new book, in which I have tried to contrast the world that we experience today, filled with terrifying existential threats, such as catastrophic climate change, pandemics, all-destroying nuclear war, and the threat of large-scale famine, with the world that we would wish it to be.
Johan Scales Avery
The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link:
“THE WORLD AS IT IS AND THE WORLD AS IT COULD BE”, in its original form, dates from 1983, and it was the first article that I ever wrote about global problems.
Jane Goodall, one of the most prestigious and well-known women around the world for her research | Image from Wall Street International.
3 April 2021 (Wall Street International)* — In truth the full name of this great character is Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall. She was a skinny, pale, blond-haired girl. No one would have expected that such a slender and shy person would later emerge one of the most prestigious and well-known women around the world for her research and activities in the defense of nature and advocate of conservation.
3 April 2021 (IOM)* — In addition to the toll COVID-19 has taken on our physical health, the United Nations has warned of a global mental health epidemic that could last for generations. This was addressed in the recent Policy Brief of the Secretary-General “COVID-19 and the Need for Action on Mental Health“.
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IOM’s emotional support hotline advertised on a campaign banner.
That call was echoed on the snowy streets of Ukraine, where massive blue masks on the main squares brought attention to the mental health aspect of the current crisis.
© UNICEF/Seyba Keïta | Mali begins its vaccination programme against COVID-19 with Fanta Siby, Minister for Health, the first to be inoculated.
