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Live Chat: Sri Lanka Is Young but Aging Fast

Dilinika Peiris's picture

Sri Lanka's population is young now, but getting older quickly. What does this demographic transition mean to you and for Sri Lanka?

Join a live chat Jan. 7 on the World Bank Sri Lanka Facebook page with experts including Indralal De Silva, professor at the University of Colombo; Sundararajan Gopalan, senior health, nutrition, and population specialist with the World Bank; Shalika Subasinghe, social protection consuiltant with the World Bank; and Tehani Ariyaratne of the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA).

The discussion will focus on the dimensions of growing old in Sri Lanka and move on to the challenge Sri Lanka is facing in dealing with an aging population with limited resources.

Nutrição na América Latina: um menu de políticas para melhorar as respostas de emergência

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

 También disponible en español e inglés

Mulheres e crianças primeiro! Este chamado parece familiar? A regra cavalheiresca que ficou famosa no naufrágio do Titanic parece ter se estendido, de nossas mentes, a todas as situações de emergência.

Apesar disso, parece que na América Latina e no Caribe (e) esta regra há muito tempo estabelecida não pode ser levada ao pé da letra. Como se sabe, em geral mulheres e crianças não ocupam o primeiro lugar nas iniciativas públicas destinadas às situações emergenciais e de crise.

How does Africa fare? Findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study

Patricio V. Marquez's picture

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a systematic effort to assess the global distribution and causes of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors, was launched last week in London. 

And a special issue of The Lancet has published its results (http://www.thelancet.com/themed/global-burden-of-disease).

What are some of the main findings for Africa that can be drawn from the GBD 2010?

  • Since 1990, the largest gains in life expectancy worldwide occurred in sub-Saharan African countries, especially in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger and Rwanda, where life expectancy increased by 12-15 years for men and women. Overall, male life expectancy increased from 48.8 in 1990 to 53.2 years in 2010 in central sub-Saharan Africa, 50.9 to 59.4 years in eastern sub-Saharan Africa, and 53.0 to 57.9 years in western sub-Saharan Africa. 

Nutrition in Latin America: a policy menu to improve emergency responses

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

También disponible en español y portugués

Women and children first! Sound familiar? The gentlemanly rule of Titanic-fame seems to have expanded in our collective minds to all emergency situations.

It seems, though, that in Latin America and the Caribbean this time-honored rule is not written in stone. As it turns out, women and children are generally not at the forefront of public efforts in crises and emergency situations.

Public Health Insurance in India: The Real Story

Jesko Hentschel's picture

You might not think of health insurance as a suspenseful subject, but a recently released book on the subject proves different. As such, there is one missing entry on the back cover, describing the book "Government-Sponsored Health Insurance in India: Are You Covered?" by authors Gerard La Forgia and Somil Nagpal. Perhaps something like “The authors play with their readers’ nerves as they drill deeper and deeper into the mysterious workings of health insurance programs in India. Slowly a multi-faceted picture emerges, which the authors skillfully bring to bustling life, not least by adding fiscal and political economy spice throughout.”

Where in the world is a hospitalization least affordable?

Adam Wagstaff's picture

In the developing world, a hospitalization is one of the things that families – especially poor ones – fear most. This came through in country after country in the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor exercise. Here are just some examples:

A man from Ghana is quoted as saying: “Take the death of this small boy this morning, for example. The boy died of measles. We all know he could have been cured at the hospital. But the parents had no money and so the boy died a slow and painful death, not of measles, but out of poverty.”

The researchers write that in Lahore, Pakistan, “a father explained that it had taken him eight years to repay debts acquired after he, his wife, and two of their children had been hospitalized.”

Shocking facts about primary health care in India, and their implications

Adam Wagstaff's picture

There’s nothing quite like a cold shower of shocking statistics to get you thinking. A paper that came out in Health Affairs today, written by my colleague Jishnu Das and his collaborators, is just such a cold shower.

Fake patients
Das and his colleagues spent 150 hours training each of 22 Indians to be credible fake patients. These actors were then sent into the consulting rooms of 305 medical providers – some in rural Madhya Pradesh (MP), others in urban Delhi – to allow the study team to assess the quality of care that the providers were delivering.

A lot of thought went into just what conditions the fake patients should pretend to have. The team wanted the conditions to be common, and to be ones that had established medical protocols with government-provided treatment checklists. The fake patients shouldn’t be subjected to invasive exams, and they needed to be able to be able to credibly describe invisible symptoms.

As HIV/AIDS cases increase in the Philippines, so does activism

Chris Lagman's picture
Photo from Aktionsbündnis gegen Aids through a Creative Commons license

It was Christmas dinner two years ago, in 2010, among my gay friends. I just came back from an expat assignment in the US, and was greatly enjoying the uniquely Filipino way of celebrating the cheery season. Towards the end of that dinner, one of my close friends came up to me saying he wanted to speak with me in private.

The two of us went outside the restaurant, and in a dark corner of the parking lot he told me he wanted me to be among the first to know. Early that month, he had himself tested for HIV, and found out he was positive. I was so shocked that no words came out of my mouth, I remember just giving him the tightest hug I could, my mind blank, my heart racing, not knowing what to say or do next. He was my first close friend who came out to me as HIV-positive.

Malaysia: Fishermen, drug use and HIV coming full circle

Sutayut Osornprasop's picture

In Malaysia, over half of all HIV infections are transmitted through sharing contaminated needles and syringes. To combat the spread of the epidemic, the government in 2006 spearheaded 'harm reduction' interventions (pdf) which included a program where people who inject drugs are provided unused needles and syringes in exchange for used injecting equipment. Those who are addicted to opioids such as heroin, the most commonly used illicit substance in Malaysia, can also enroll in rehabilitation for synthetic opioid replacement therapy. Synthetic opioids, taken orally, help stabilize the opioid cravings of patients, thus enabling them to work. The move to introduce harm reduction in Malaysia revealed something that caught people by surprise—many of the fishermen from port city on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia use drugs.

Ready, Set, Hack!

Sanitation Hackathon Team's picture

After months of preparation, the Sanitation Hackathon weekend is upon us.

In dozens of countries around the world, IT and sanitation experts will join forces for an intensive brainstorming and programming marathon to develop innovative applications for some of the world’s sanitation challenges.

Cervical Cancer Undermines Gender Equality in Africa

Patricio V. Marquez's picture

This blog post is co-authored with: Sheila Dutta

The 2012 World Development Report (WDR) “Gender Equality and Development” found that, while many disadvantages faced by women and girls have shrunk thanks to development, major gaps remain.

A significant gap is the excess female mortality in many low- and middle income countries, especially in childhood and during reproductive years. Cervical cancer —a preventable condition that usually results from a viral infection by the human papillomavirus (HPV) that is generally sexually transmitted— is one of the leading causes of premature death and ill health among women in sub-Saharan Africa.  As the figure shows, the Eastern, Western and Southern African regions have the highest incidence rates of cervical cancer in the world.  Rates exceed 50 per 100,000 populations and age-standardized mortality exceeds 40 per 100,000 populations. 

“Women in Water” in Pakistan Shows the Way

Masroor Ahmad's picture

Pakistan’s population of nearly 181 million is growing at 2% per year; this population explosion has resulted in the country meeting the international definition of water stress—water availability in Pakistan has plummeted from about 5,000 cubic meters per capita in the early 1950s to less than 1,100 m3 per capita in 2011.

This ominous, mounting water paucity impairs the lives of Pakistan’s rural women, who bear the arduous responsibility of collecting and providing water for their households. The absence of a safe water supply at or near their homes—and the resulting need to walk up to 4 km or more to get water each day—has aggravated the burden of women’s duties in many ways, making them vulnerable in terms of both their health and personal safety.

Rural women are the worst victims of water scarcity; however, in some communities, evidence indicates that women are emerging as a “herald of change.”

What Do Toilets and Cell Phones Have in Common?

Jose Luis Irigoyen's picture

They both hold the potential to help meet the needs of the poor and end poverty. New ideas and innovative solutions are critical to address the 2.5 billion people who lack access to proper sanitation. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills more than 4,000 children a day and a lack of sanitation results in billions of dollars in economic losses to developing countries. Now that more people have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet or latrine, it’s time to leverage technology to help reach development goals.

Innovation in India to Expand Health Coverage

Harold Alderman's picture

A number of recent innovations have increased the scope of climate insurance available for rural communities. For example, by using rainfall or forage cover instead of individual assessments, farmers and pastoralists have the option of insuring a portion of their livelihoods. A range of schemes have been attempted to provide a similar level of coverage for out-of-pocket health expenditures to workers in the informal sectors.   


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