[Second of a two-part article]

Meeting of the Working Group on the National Mental Health Strategic Plan, January 2020

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Oct 28 2021 (IPS) – Mental health and treating mental health conditions involves not only treating an individual’s ability to manage their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interactions with others, but also ensuring that the social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental conditions are in place through effective national policies, social protections, adequate living standards, working conditions, community social support, and a tiered system of care through a robust network of health services. In Banglad…

Patients wait for their COVID-19 vaccination at a health centre in Kabale District, Uganda. More than 5.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, but only 2% of them in Africa, says World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Credit: UNICEF/Catherine Ntabadde

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 20 2021 (IPS) – The 21-month-long corona virus pandemic has triggered three new phrases in the UN lexicon: “vaccine famine, vaccine apartheid and vaccine nationalism”.

And the largest number of victims facing the triple threats are from developing countries, mostly in Africa, as reflected in grim statistics.

Dr Richard Mihigo, coordinator for…

Akshaya Kumar is the crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

While most health care workers in the wealthy world were vaccinated early in 2021, only a quarter of Africa’s health workers had received their Covid-19 jabs at the end of last year. Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye

NEW YORK, Feb 16 2022 (IPS) – Efforts to combat the vast global in access to Covid-19 vaccines just got a boost.…

PHILADELPHIA, Apr 22 2022 (IPS) – The Karnataka court’s verdict to uphold the hijab ban has intensified the protest in the state. The row has been typically perceived by many as manufactured by the politicians pointing to the culture of politics in the state. While the jury is still out there on this, evidence on how state’s local culture constructs and deconstructs religious identity allows drawing conclusions with some definitiveness. The culture of state’s politics is one side of the coin. Considering its flip side – politics of culture, particularly of the religious cultural identity, is just as relevant.

Vani S. Kulkarni

Few years ago (between 2014-early 2020…

Sungjoon Ham, Souta Oshiro, and Alex Yoon are middle school learners living in the USA and Asia. This is the first in a series of opinion pieces written by young people under the banner of Youth Thought Leaders.

Souta Oshiro, Seoul, Korea. “This is a meme that I created. It is about donating foods that you overbought to food banks. I tried to make it funny and effective.” Credit: Souta Oshiro

Seoul, Tokyo, Boston, Jun 13 2022 (IPS) – Johnny, living in the United States (US), goes to his school and g…

CHINA – Constructing an irrigation network in Qinghai Province. Workers were paid part of their wages in food supplied by the World Food Programme. Credit WFP/Sarah Errington

LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 8 2022 (IPS) – As our planet continues to heat up, extreme weather has affected many of us. From the west coast of North America across Europe, the Middle East and Asia to Pakistan and New Zealand, wildfires and flash floods have destroyed homes and property and disrupted the daily lives of millions.

Supply chains, already badly affected by COVID, have been further complicated by drying rivers and waterways. In the more developed countries, insurance covers much of the short…

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 23 2022 (IPS) – A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.

Farhana Haque Rahman

Beyond the stark statistics of millions of people displaced by war and natural disasters, it has been a 12 months that tragically highlighted our global interconnections and how a confluence of events and trends can bring another year of record levels of hunger.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians (numbe…

On the occasion of World Autism Awareness Day on 2 April 2023, IPS is republishing ‘When Is Too Much Autism Awareness Still Not Enough?’

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 31 2023 (IPS) – When is too much Autism awareness still not enough? This thought recurs every April as we near World Autism Day on April 2, and parents reach out to me after reading enthusiastic and well-meaning news and journal articles – which are actually harmful and hurtful.

Saima W. Hossain

In 2008, along with a few dedicated parents and professionals, we began our effort to raise awareness around Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We eventually came together to form an advocacy, capacity-building, …

BANGKOK / PENANG, Sep 20 2022 (IPS) – Economic recovery since the COVID-19 pandemic has been uneven amidst a cautious loosening of restrictions. But even at the height of the pandemic, it was business as usual for the tobacco industry.

Tobacco companies remain profitable, making in 2022 and capitalizing on the situation by promoting and selling their lethal products while convincing governments that their industry should not be penalised during the pandemic, claiming tobacco is a good investment.

This is an industry that perpetuates an annual loss of in global health costs and lost productivity, amounting to 1.8% of the world’s GDP. 14% of all deaths globally (over 8…

Congestion in public hospitals is frequent in Latin America even without epidemics. Long waits and the need to resort to out-of-pocket spending to obtain medical assistance are common in the region. CREDIT: Courtesy of Integralatampost

CARACAS, Apr 4 2020 (IPS) – Health systems in Latin America, already falling short in their capacity to serve the population, especially the poor, are in a weak position and face serious risks when it comes to addressing …