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Today's Top News
Downturn Could Kill 400,000 Children, Warns Margaret Chan
Thousands of women and children are dying as a direct consequence of the current economic crisis which is already derailing efforts to improve maternal care and cut child death rates, the head of the World Health Organisation has warned.
Margaret Chan: 'Past recessions have provided evidence of deaths' Speaking to The Times after a meeting of world leaders hosted by Gordon Brown yesterday, Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, said that risks posed by the credit crunch to poor nations were already taking hold.
Dr Chan said that an estimate of between 200,000 and 400,000 additional child deaths per year caused by the downturn was "entirely credible". She called on world leaders to show solidarity and "walk the talk" of funding pledges to poorer nations.
"There is no reason why we should doubt that this [death toll] will happen if we fail to act," Dr Chan said. "Because if we do not, more women will suffer or die because of complications arising from pregnancy and delivery, and more children will die because of lack of food or immunisation or poor water and sanitation.
"It is very clear. Past recessions have ample evidence to demonstrate the fact. And the two groups that are most vulnerable are women and children, especially girls."
Dr Chan, a member of the Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems, which also includes Mr Brown, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, and eight other world leaders, added that she had already encountered evidence of worsening funding problems.
A decline in remittance payments - when people from impoverished countries working in the developed countries send money home - was already impacting on community health, she said. Concerns are also growing that the poorest countries are no longer able to prioritise healthcare from the little funds they have, while donor countries might renege on their aid commitments.
More than half a million women die from preventable complications in pregnancy or childbirth every year, while it is calculated that a child dies from health-related problems every three seconds.
Among the eight Millennium Development Goals, signed up to by all United Nations member states, are pledges to reduce by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate and cut by three quarters the maternal deaths by 2015. Many countries are currently lagging behind these targets, while the funding required to reach them is way off course.
A report published yesterday by the international financing taskforce warns that development funding shortfalls could reach as much as £30 billion a year by 2015. It estimates that this money would save an extra 10 million lives - three millions mothers and seven million children.
The report stresses that even if poorer countries and aid donors meet existing commitments - including all donors achieving 0.7 per cent of gross national income for aid and developing country governments investing 15 per cent expenditure in healthcare - there will still be a funding gap of $7 billion a year.
At the moment, low-income countries spend $24 a head on healthcare compared to $4,000 a head spent in the developed world. While better health systems have led to a fall in HIV AIDS infections and wider availability of malaria and TB vaccines, there is an urgent need to invest more in the fabric of developing country health systems - especially training and employing more health workers, the taskforce concludes.
Dr Chan said that to date she had not heard of a country refusing to honour their aid commitment, "but words are words and countries need to walk the talk".
"Given the financial situation, if funding is not forthcoming the [healthcare] shortfall is only going to get bigger. My first hand experience talking to heads of government, heads of state and ministers of health suggests that some countries that depend on ODAs [official development assistance] or remittance are seeing a reduction in those."
Specific pledges include nearly $1 billion from Britain over the next three years to support national health plans in eight countries.
The Taskforce also discussed yesterday initial proposals for new ways of financing healthcare to meet aid shortfalls. The report highlights the case for frontloading expenditure, using market mechanisms to stimulate health investments, and encouraging greater contributions from the public and the private sector. The Working Group will report its recommendations before the G8 Summit in Italy.
"At this time when every citizen in every country and their political leaders are preoccupied with the financial crisis and what it means to themselves, it is vital that we focus on this solidarity," Dr Chan added.
"It is so important to champion women and children, otherwise once again they will fall by the wayside.
"Recent investment [in infectious disease prevention] is making good progress and we must protect that. We need to show that we have learnt from past recessions. If we take action and introduce prompt measures then hopefully the damage can be reduced."
Douglas Alexander, the International Development secretary, told The Times that with the risk of 90 million people being pushed into extreme poverty by the downturn, the Government remained fully committed to its aid pledges.
"The stark reality is that if the global community fails to find new ways to support and develop health services in the developing world, many millions more will die," he said. "We must act to prevent this financial crisis from becoming a human crisis."
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21 Comments so far
Show AllHuman population out of control.
Resources becoming more scarce.
And yet the desire to keep as many humans alive as long as possible.
Cant have your cake and eat it too.
The universe is a very big place. It would take 1000 years or more just to colonize the solar system. We need some perspective here. Humans are valuable and important. That top 1% make it hard for all the rest of us but we have to get off this rock. There is unlimited energy available in space to terraform the planets. We need to stop picking on each other and use the resources we have wisely. We need to severely curb the yachts, private jets and all the other destructive behavior of the rich BEFORE we start trying to dictate to the rest.
AGG - How -exactly- do you propose to 'colonise' the solar system? What technology will you use to render the various uninhabitable planets fit for terrestrial life? What form of commerce do you propose to pay for this grand adventure? Were will you get the resources to start even the most bare bones of these enterprises?
Humans are valuable and important? TO WHO? Other humans? From even the most generous reading of history man regards his fellow as a resource to be exploite or a nuisance to be removed.
Here's a fact for you: If every human in the world were to drop dead the moment you read this THE WORLD WOULD NOT NOTICE! Within 5000 years (less than an eyeblink in geologic time), the only signs humans ever existed would be the slowly eroding footprints on the moon, nuclear waste, and the miniscule granules of plastic floating in the ocean.
Dinosaurs in their vast variety of forms were the dominant lifeform on this planet for MILLIONS of years. And they did very well for themselves with brains not much larger than an orange. There is considerable argument going on in biology circles that human style intelligence and sapience are NOT survival factors.
To assert that 'humans' are special and revered is to hearken back to the grand ignorance of Christian arrogance.
Which is what led to this entire mess in the first place...
These circles discussing the viability of the human species are humans. are they not? So when they reach their verdict, please tell me if they jumped off a cliff or went back to work. I sympathize with your judgement of homo sap trashing the earth but insist that there are solutions. The problem is all those human pigs that are rich and greedy. And the idea that people who call themselves Christian means they think it's God's will to trash the world is ass backwards. Acording to Christian theology, its God's universe, not ours and we are supposed to respect all of it and take loving care of it. So if we have asshats who hijack religion and anything else to gain some cheap rationale to shit all over the world and us does not mean it's okay. Actions speak louder than words. But I hear you. I haven't a clue how to colonize and terraform the hostile planets out there but if we don't it will be like you say, a few pieces of trash and some footprints on the moon. I guess the roaches get their turn next.
Webber, easy to say but ......
Any volunteers to save resources by you know ...
I didn't think you would Webber.
... and if it were your children, wife, sister, mother, Webber, would you be so cavalier?
We have the capacity to feed, clothe, house, provide medical care, clean water, education to every man, woman and child on earth if the male leaders--with very few exceptions--of the nations and corporations of the world would put the planet's health and the health of people first instead of continuing to play "missile envy," and vying for a place as one of the Alpha Gorillas of the world, whether that's with money, guns, bombs, power, control, etcetera ...
www.zeitgeistmovie.com and www.zeitgeistaddendum.com
Download the Design for the Planet and Zeitgeist Action on the www.thezeitgeistmovement.com site. A wonderful possibility, sketchy, but a dynamic, rational vision.
We have to change. We've got about five years I figure to start getting it right.
John F. Kennedy in his last speeches talked about world peace and being able to design a world where everyone has enough. He was shot, of course, as all of those powerful figures who talk about enough for everyone and a world of peace and cooperation and harmony involving all people are usually done away with.
The savagery of the United States of America in league with former Colonial Powers and the most insane, savage government on earth currently in Israel, has to stop in the interests of profits for the arms manufacturers and the control of the world and its resources. That would be a good start.
In this country we are dumber and more selfish and self-centered than we were seven decades ago when I was growing up. And that's no accident. People have been conditioned by media and our educational system to think we can do no wrong and we are the country lit by the flaming torch, the beacon of freedom, of the Statue of Liberty, and we deserve all kinds of everything without a thought for anyone else.
Maybe I'm over-reacting to what you said, Webber. If I am, I apologize ahead of time, but it seems to me it does not take rocket scientists to figure out what we as a human family need to do and need to have in order to have an ordered world with enough for all, ... and that includes family planning, birth control, choices for adoption, not having children, limiting the number of one's progeny.
Rational thinking, truly rational thinking for the best outcome for all would be a wonderful leap of consciousness.
I will not hold my breath.
But I do know that we are all in this together on this increasingly fragile, finite, little jewel of a planet. And I do care that as I sit here writing at a computer in a comfortable home with a cup of coffee and everything I need to live well, that too many mothers and fathers out there are eating dirt or grass and drinking dirty water and trying their best even as their children sicken and die to stay alive when it is not necessary. And too many are killed, maimed, starved and whatever in the interests of someone else's Power needs.
I can say what have we become? It's not that. We humans have not yet become what we need to become, what we are able to become, and that's the message and the work ...
peace, bro -
/cm
We need a Manhattan Project to stop Global Warming, end hunger, provide family planning and educate the third world by providing computers and online services.
This should be a multinational effort. As a peace and good will gesture, funds should be provided by deep cuts in military budgets worldwide.
People need real structural change and not more aid baskets sent while opposing that structural economic change.
'Speaking to The Times after a meeting of world leaders hosted by Gordon Brown yesterday, Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO'....
This is not it.
we need all of it, or, at least we need to recognize the inevitability of all of it ...the structural as well as the personal change. as we have already overshot our human carrying capacity in some respects, there is and will continue to be a great scramble for solutions. it is key not to get distracted by pointing the finger of blame or parsing out what is and is not the solution, because the solution is various and amorphous and has more to do with a surrendering of certainty. this downturn/meltdown is being seen as the detrimentally vulnerable monoculture it is by the powerful and credentialed and low-caste alike. the first world neoliberal religion, beholden to mammon at all costs because utterly convinced of 'the end of history' and that this human artifact is an irrefutable physical law of the universe, is in process of collapsing under its own weight. the fiction of its reality is being exposed and we humans are going to need to stretch our imaginations considerably beyond old arguments that prop up the illusion that otherism works. there is no 'other'. we must learn how to converse with both our internal and external 'enemy' and regard our opponent as our most valuable ally in tackling the problem we all share... that of human survival. for this it is necessary to trust ourselves and one another enough to engage with the hard work of healing the wounds we have colluded with inflicting through our indifference or complacency or ignorance. we each hopefully can recognize the need to step out of our comfort zones and engage in the unique ways that only we can. hm. i guess i'm talking spiritual matters here, but perhaps it's relevant. i think what i'm trying to get at is how we have to wake up from our overly entertained trance and attend to our gardens and children and neighbors and elders and not get so lost in the cyber-conversation, yet still take part in it because the net is a tool to spark and important fire at the grassroots.
Without concerted efforts to curb population growth, funding to feed the starving is essentially adding fuel to the fire. Such efforts had been blocked by the past administration, but are still impeded by the zealot radicals.
One Fuld, one Madoff, one Cheney spend and waste resources that could support thousands or millions of people. Most people in the US use energy, food and resources at a rate of 5 to 20 times that of the average earthling. The waste we generate is toxifying air, water and earth. We need to constrain excess in our personal lives, but above all control corporate greed and militarism.
Still you are right. Even if we all lived simply, we are getting close to earth's carrying capacity. Empowerment of women and protecting the health of children are is the keys to reducing birth rates. When women can be assured their children are likely to survive, that women can engage in economic life outside the home, and are thus liberated from undue control by husband and his family, then birth rates go down, given there is access to contraception. Education, the ability to earn an independent income, and control over her reproduction has to be the right of every woman - not only for her sake, but for the sake of life on earth.
This needs to happen soon.
Joe
You've got it right but it seems that if you and others would investigate a source that has been working on gathering the information to determine what the status of natural resources are for the number of people on this planet since before 1972 when their book, 'Limits to Growth', was published giving a quantitative look at our plight. They researchers updated the book in 2002 as they planned in doing so 30 years after the 1st publication. It is grim and it very well can be the next big event that brings untold amounts of death, misery and destruction to what will be left of the planet. Well, it won't be that fast, like an earthquake or astroid events as this will creep up with less and less access to natural resources.
The research initially was thought that around the decade of 2020 or 2030 a condition called overshoot would enter into the life of the planet. Overshoot is the part that there is more being use and consumed than the planet can renew, especially in the orgainics part. By the 1980s though, it was determined that the human population overshoot had begun. This is where we humans take from the renewable resources about 20% more than the planet replaces. So instead of 2020 or 2030, overshoot appeared sooner than expected which was as astounding to the researchers as it should be to anyone that the population of earth which in October of 2005 or 2006 the 'official' number of humans surpassed the 6,600,000,000 mark which was a tripling of the number of humans since the mid 1950s or so. Think of that, a tripling of humans in just 50 or 60 years from 2,000,000,000 to 6,600,000,000 people.
These numbers must be close because the other side of the over use of resources that cannot the replaced are the sinks that are quietly accumulating all those pollutants that we are made to believe by corporations and the industrial side that if they are not allowed to freely dispose of their wastes, they would not be able to function.
Well, here is the link to wikipedia on 'Limits to Growth':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth
duplicate eliminated
jc, if I may call you that, no, "most people in the US (don't) use energy, food and resources at a rate of 5 to 20 times that of the average earthling.
Most of the sickening overuse, abuse, and sloth of US resource waste is done by precisely the same top 1% who vividly demonstrate their arrogance, audacity, bluster, braggadocio, brass, chutzpah, conceit, contemptuousness, disdain, egotism, gall, haughtiness, high-handedness, hubris, imperiousness, insolence, loftiness, nerve, ostentation, overbearance, pomposity, presumption, pretension, pride, priggishness, scornfulness, self-importance, self-love, smugness, superciliousness, swagger, and vanity toward all others in the world, as much as they do for the working-class in the U.S.
Those of the ruling-elite 'corporate financial Empire' controlling our country behind the facade of their two-party, "Vichy" sham of democracy (and amply aided by their equally "Vichy" corporatist media) have no compulsion of screwing their U.S. peons, serfs, and proles just as much as they do every other aveerave citizen of the world.
The proof is in the pudding:
The U.S. GINI Coefficient of income INEQUALITY (a scale that runs from an egalitarian rating of 0 for perfectly equal incomes, to 1.0 for all income in one person's hand) is 0.49 --- and rising fast.
Robert Mugabe's dictatorial kleptocracy of Zimbabwe is only slightly worse at 0.53.
While all the world's advanced 'social democracies' like Europe and Japan range from 0.23 to 0.31 in fair and moderate sharing income, and 'commonwealth'.
A very similar and drastically inequitable division of all other resources, including land, real-estate, production resources (plant and equipment), energy, water, food, education exactly parallels that of income.
The very same piggish CEO, banksters, hedge fund whores, and private equity pirates who demand 500:1 advantages in income over their workers also waste nearly 500:1 rations of fuel (in their yachts and jets), land (for their houses too numerous to even remember the number of), water (for their pools and country clubs), etc. etc.
Unfortunately, gluttony is a generalized trait of the elite. Where the ruling-elite are gluttonous in income and wealth, the same elite are also just as gluttonous and caviler in resource waste and profligacy, extravagance, lavishness, squander, and excess.
So, jc, it is not average working class Americans who are the tip of the spear in this rape of the world's resources --- but the 'enough is never enough' ruling-elite who are guilty as charged.
Extending the wisdom of Pogo, "We have met the enemy", but they is not us. They is the ruling-elite --- their 'empire-thinking' and their Economic Ruling Empire, itself, well hidden behind the facade of their two-party, 'Vichy' sham of democracy.
Exactly! Well put.
The American political system is essentially a contract between the Republican and Democratic parties, enforced by federal and state two-party laws, all designed to guarantee the survival of both no matter how many people despise or ignore them. - Richard Reeves
We need to stay out of other peoples business, the world hates us, we shouldn't tell other people what to do,our military should not be in other countries, etc........
Then:
"but it seems to me it does not take rocket scientists to figure out what we as a human family need to do and need to have in order to have an ordered world with enough for all, ... and that includes family planning, birth control, choices for adoption, not having children, limiting the number of one's progeny."
"We need a Manhattan Project to stop Global Warming, end hunger, provide family planning and educate the third world by providing computers and online services."
Not picking on anyone, but you can't have it both ways. If we should withdraw, if we should keep our noses out of other peoples business, we can't be involved in their problems. We can't be responsible for feeding them or protecting them....except in equal amounts to all other countries. And only delivered by other countries planes, ships, etc.
Time for equity with other countries.
Sounds good to me. 1000 overseas bases closed, 90% of the pentagon budget axed, No more "foreign" aid (you know, that money that goes to our overseas corporations and flunkies now), no more "loans" by the IMF to the same "foreign" countries so that US corporations can build infrastructure and provide kickbacks to our flunkies in said countries and no more PACs. Also, no more military hardware to our "friends" in the middle east. If Coca Cola can't get a bottling plant put into Iraq or if Peru wants to nationalize a banana plantation owned by a US corporation, tough shit. Let em' grow bananas right here in the USA.
Go for it. You'll end up like Sonny Bono. Altruism isn't part of politics in the USA or anywhere else for that matter. Ruffled conervative feathers because of dictated green or charitable policies is a giant straw man and you know it, pal.
Our teaching hospital and research institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has already hit a record number of patients. We've had to erect tents in the parking lots to accomodate them, and my ICU is overfilled with severely malnourished infants with life-threatening conditions.
The slum-dwellers whom we serve were already malnourished and living on the edge, and the current economic catastrophe is falling heavily on them. The bitter fruits of 28 years of neoliberal economic policy are distasteful to people in developed countries, but lethal to the world's most vulnerable.
The comment to survive "human being would have had to pretty much live like the Tribes of this land used to live upon the earth" ,is not so far removed from the Anarchist vision of Noam Chomsky et al. of small self governing egalitarian communities but we may need some help from big brother to get there.
Let me explain:
30 Years ago China realised it had an over population problem (as so many of our commentators have correctly pointed out goes fot the World) so the was solution "One Family One Child" and it is working. China's population I read is 400 million less than would otherwise been so.
Now let's look at the "Climate Breakdown" described by George Monbiot on this site. Devastation appears to me to be looming for sure and problems like the impending infant and mother deaths from the economic downturn are going to look small in comparison.
This week the UN released a report about the World Water Crisis, present & looming, from various causes including and extra 2,500 million extra humans in the near future. It made various recommendations but excluded radical measures to avoid the extra people. With Climate Breakdown we can expect numbers greater than this to perish horribly.
On both these counts the UN needs to adopt the Chinese big brother approach for all humanity, both presently rich & presently poor. That also means the Security Council must find ways to enforce such a difficult policy.
The alternative of not doing so however, may provide a self correcting mechanism which will both reduce populations and Climate Breakdown.
The name of the alternative is "Nuclear Winter".
OK. I've tried to comment on this article twice before and I screwed it up both times. Now, everyone is probably done...
CEE Miracles
Thanks for putting Webber in his place... I wanted to say the same thing you did when i read the comment...
I also agree with alot of the rest of what you said... That you are not holding your breathe in regards to the human species changing anytime soon... That we are selfish and acting stupid...
I've been coming up with this philosophy -that no, we are not going to change-at least not enough of us, in time for it to make a difference to save us in the numbers we're at now... Why?
Because I think we are on a continuum as far as understanding and accepting our plight as a species... IN other words, there are those at one extreme, with the power and money that would make a difference on a large scale-but they are either too greedy and addicted to their power or are in total denial... then there are those who are already living a life which is the future model of what and who humans should be and doing to promote planetary health and community prosperity. Most of the rest of us fall in the middle, with varying degrees of muddling around one way or the other toward or against improving our lot and that of our children, grandchildren and beyond.
So,my point. I hate to be negative, but I think that the power struggles coming are way more than what most people expect. Along with the climate catastophies and economic pain... We are just beginning to see what life will be like for along time. Transformation is usually not a simple thing. It's painful and very hard to do.
I think Obama and his administration want to fix things, want to equalize the playing field to some degree. I thought he had a more out of the box - revolutionary vision and method to do that... but I don't know if he's being strategic or if he is just not able to bust through the status quo type system... For instance on health care, single payer is the only way to go... But what is he doing with band -aides????
I still say that this year is the do or die year- By 2010 the tensions will bE eway to explosive and the term class war will hold a totally different meaning.
Do I want to see this kind of life? NO... I'D LOVE TO SEE CHANGE CONINUE ON A PROGRESSIVE BUT, FAST TRAIN, LIKE OUR VOTING OUT THE NON-FUNTIONAL TYPE OF GOVERNMENT THAT WE HAD FOR 8YRS= AND VOTING IN OBAMA ... IF THE MOMENTUM OF RADICAL CHANGE COULD CONTINUE IT MIGHT SAVE US...