Ben Phillips is the author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’, due to be released in September. He is also an advisor to the United Nations, governments and civil society organisations, and was Campaigns Director for Oxfam and for ActionAid, and co-founded the Fight Inequality Alliance.

Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa

ROME, Aug 26 2020 (IPS) – Any of the first names that the media reported as having Covid were those of the rich and powerful, from movie stars to political leaders. Be ye ever so high, the virus is above thee – or so it seemed.

Now…

It’s not a lack of recognition that there’s knowledge and expertise outside the developed world; it’s just that such knowledge is not seen as relevant given the structural differences between developed and developing countries. Credit: UNFPA.

Oct 16 2020 (IPS) – Nine months into the pandemic, Europe remains one of the regions worst affected by COVID-19. Ten of the 20 countries with the are European. The other ten are in the Americas. This includes the US, which has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the world.

Most of Africa and Asia, on the contrary, still seems spared. Of the countries with reported COVID-related deaths, the ten with the lowest death…

Nov 30 2020 (IPS) – World AIDS Day this year finds us still deep amid another pandemic – . The highly infectious novel coronavirus has swept across the world, devastating health systems and laying waste to economies as governments introduced drastic measures to contain the spread. Not since the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the 1990s have countries faced such a common health threat.

This explains why UNAIDS has selected the theme “” for this year’s World AIDS Day.

Infectious diseases such as these remain a major threat to human health and prosperity. Around have died from AIDS-related illnesses in the last 40 years. At the time of writing, had already died from COVID-1…

MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 2021 (IPS) – The new year has arrived, but the situation is worse than in the last months of 2020. The pandemic is still unleashed: the end of the year holidays, the official permissiveness, and the slowness of the distribution of vaccines seem to announce that the disease will continue to wreak havoc for several months in most of the world, particularly in America, Europe, and parts of Asia like India. It has therefore been required to redouble preventive measures: a new lockdown and the disruption of almost all economic and school activities. Therefore, the recovery looks still uncertain and distant.

Saul Escobar Toledo

On the health front, we can expect t…

SINGAPORE, Feb 22 2021 (IPS) – Bangladeshis at the present time share a modicum of justifiable pride in the fact that the world merits this country worth watching in terms of its economic potentials. To my mind , we have reached this stage for the following reasons: First, effective utilization of early foreign assistance; second a steady ,albeit sustained, move away from a near -socialistic to an open and liberal economy; third , a shift from agriculture to manufacturing as land-space shrank to accommodate urbanization; fourth , an unleashing of remarkable entrepreneurial spirit among private sector captains of industry, as evidenced in the Ready Made Garments industry: fifth, the prevalence of a vibrant civil society intellectually aiding the social transformation with its focus on he…

The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

In northern Ghana some 50% of people lack access to safe drinking water. Credit: UNDP Ghana

EAST SUSSEX, UK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS) – In the midst of a global pandemic, when the presence of water in our lives has never seemed more important, its future availability has also never been more uncertain.

Water scarcity is now such a threat that it is even possible to trade in ‘water futures’ joining commodities like gold and oil on Wall Street, with traders .

So, while farmers and pastoralists struggle to know when the next rainfall will come, and women and children walk for hours to collect wate…

The writer* is Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology & Nutrition, Director CardioMetabolic Institute, USA

UN Secretary-General António Guterres (right) speaks with Yeashea Braddock, Operations Manager at the Morris High School vaccination site, after getting his second vaccine shot against COVID-19 at that High School in the Bronx, New York. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

NEW JERSEY, USA, May 6 2021 (IPS) – There is considerable evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk and severity of COVID-19 ( ; ). More than 50 clinical studies have published confirming that high doses of vitamin D administered early in persons with COVID-19 significantly reduce complications a…

Agroecology can fight malnutrition, curb conflict AND build community self reliance and resilience–in hunger hotspots and beyond

BOSTON / NEW YORK, Jun 11 2021 (IPS) – Acute hunger is expected to soar in over 20 countries in the next few months, warns a recent on global “hunger hotspots” from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). An estimated 34 million people are “one step away from starvation”, pushed to the brink by climate shocks, conflict, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Daniel Moss

The food aid industry is likely to be very busy in the coming years, even as Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the…

Honorine Meda became pregnant herself at the age of nineteen. Now she helps raise awareness of teenage pregnancy among girls in Dissin.

DISSIN, Burkina Faso, Jul 28 2021 (IPS) – Honorine Meda is 23. Cycling through her hometown of Dissin, in Burkina Faso’s verdant southwest, she smiles, waves and stops to chat with one of the girls she counsels.

Thanks to a program by the German development agency (GIZ) and their Pro Enfant initiative, Honorine trained to counsel teenage girls in Dissin on how to avoid pregnancies.

She became pregnant herself, with her now three-year-old son, when she was 19. It was tough, she told IPS.

“I can say it was the hardest at th…

Processed, canned food lines the shelves at a Canadian supermarket. Credit: Trevor Page

LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 22 2021 (IPS) – Food processing extends shelf-life and can transforms raw food into attractive, marketable products. It can also prevent contamination. The transformation can involve numerous physical and chemical processes such as mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction, pickling, macerating, emulsification, irradiation and lyophilization. Frozen processed and raw food changes transport and storage requirements radically; while the packaging of food, both raw and processed, is an industry unto itself.

Adulteration is a serious problem, particularly in …