How many hours do you have access to electricity? At what time are the generators turned off in your region? How much was your electricity bill last month?
These questions might sound unfamiliar for citizens in many countries. However, they became part of any discussion in Lebanon reflecting the limited access to power for the majority of the population.
Which areas suffer from this same problem?
Most of the countries having energy shortage are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, in South Sudan, Burundi and Chad, less than 10% of the entire population have access to electricity
Comparing the distribution of the average access to electricity between rural and urban areas, it can be observed that urban areas have more power access. Subsequently, countries having energy deficiency should consider using international funds for the installation of power distribution systems in rural areas.
What about Lebanon?
Although this country has a very remarkable amount of water resources, its hydraulic energy production is insignificant compared to its thermal energy production. Correspondingly, decisions should be taken to make use of our rich water assets.
The map shown below represents the distribution of the power stations in Lebanon.
Lebanon doesn’t have enough power stations which affects the power distribution among the areas and causes loss of energy in the transmission lines. Accordingly, the government should consider creating more thermal and hydraulic energy auxiliary stations to secure an even electricity distribution among all areas.
To increase electricity access, it’s recommended that the governments of developing countries take action by using wisely the international funds for the installation of power generation plants and transmission networks to cover all population needs (in all areas), taking into consideration economical and social conditions. Transparency in government should be followed by spreading public awareness to find and support policies that manage assets like coal, oil and gas as a source of energy and income. Moreover, the use of renewable sources including hydroelectric energy is an important step to generate electricity in both rural and urban areas.
Resources:
World bank data : https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/home
Open data Lebanon: https://www.opendatalebanon.org/
“When you carry a life and it’s there, and then gone, a part of your soul dies. Forever.”
As per Wikipedia, Infant Mortality is the death of young children under the age of One
Also, as per Wikipedia, there are other types of Infant Mortality which are:
Neonatal: a death that occurs in the 1st 28 days of life and Stillbirth Mortality: when a baby dies in the womb.
BUT, WHAT DOES INFANT MORTALITY MEAN TO NELLY who lost her baby in her six-month pregnancy?
What does it mean to her to lose her baby after waiting for months for his birth?
How Infant Mortality will affect her Emotionally, Physiologically and Psychologically?
As per Nelly, Infant Mortality is the death of her soul translated through a wide range of psychological and physiological problems including depression, anxiety, cognitive and physical symptoms linked to stress, marital problems, physical pain, sadness, frustration, anger, solitude, guilt…
As a Global Overview, the majority of the deaths are referred to Infant, Neonatal and Stillbirth Mortalities. We further investigated the areas in which high Infant Mortalities are occurring and we noticed that poor countries witness higher mortality rates compared to the developed countries.
Globally, as a way to enhance health of pregnant women and to reduce reduce infant mortality, Governments with the help of Humanitarian Organizations were establishing Prenatal and Postnatal Care Programs. We can notice a negative correlation between these care programs compared to infant mortality rates over the period from 1991 and 2019. Numerous studies showed their power to create more successful infant health.
While in African regions, pregnant women tend to have low adherence to Prenatal and Postnatal care regimens as shown in the graph due to the fact that Prenatal care programs were administered 6 times only over a period of 20 years and Postanatal care was administered 1 time in 2016.
Noting that in 2008, when 97% of pregnant women were administered Prenatal care resulting in a significant decrease of Infant Mortality rate.
UNICEF made efforts towards decreasing infant mortality rates which resulted in remarkable progress in child survival in the past three decades, and millions of children have better survival chances in the 1990-2019 period.
Also, UNICEF attempted to reduce infectious diseases that have high risks on infant survival. The Organization procured Antiretroviral Medicines against HIV diseases, which are represented by the red circles. The larger the circle indicates a higher percentage of pregnant women who received these medicines to Reduce the Risk of Mother-to-Child Transmission, thus reducing risks of infant mortality. The darker the grey shading indicates a higher share of women above 15 years old infected with HIV, and as we can see they are highly located in Africa.
The efforts made by Governments and Humanitarian Organizations were beneficial resulting in a decrease in infant deaths by approximately 50% over 30 years. However, infant mortality rates still represent 79% of total mortalities in 2019.
WHAT should we do GLOBALLY?
A Call to Action and a Request for Continuous Support
Prenatal Care – Developing enhanced prenatal care, including psychosocial support, education and health promotion.
– Expanding and improving home visiting programs. Postnatal Care – Reinforcement and development of the interventions as employing more midwives; empowering mothers, families and communities on Maternal and Neonatal Health issues by providing ease of access especially in African regions. Sustainable Development – Tackling infectious diseases such as HIV, Anemia, Malaria specially in African regions to reduce mother-to-child transmission and increasing infant survival rates.
– Promoting healthy lifestyle.
Work jointly with community leaders, government, trade unions and employers to understand health challenges and to offer pregnant women sufficient comfort.
WHAT should we additionally do to African regions?
We were very concerned about the infectious diseases that highly affect Infant Mortality Rates.
We noticed in the following graph that as health expenditures increased, infant mortality decreased. So we decided to seek additional funds to support the health system. Then, we analyzed the types of expenditures spent on health, we found that External funding is too low representing only 11% of total Health Expenditures.
Seeking for additional funds from External Sources would be a good idea for increasing health expenditures hence decreasing infectious diseases and increasing survival rates in Africa.
You’ve probably heard about all the advancements that the world has witnessed in the past decades, be it on technological breakthroughs, social rights or positive movements towards a sustainable society. You heard leaders from all around the globe preaching these achievements, promising the current generation “a better future for their kids”. But have you ever paused for a second and thought about these last few words? “Better future for their kids”. You pause for a second and look around, to just realize that this world that we are trying to improve for the future generations, has already condemned part of that generation – and their only fault is that they are kids. This post specifically targets child labor – a crime which, to date, has not yet been abolished. What is child labor exactly? The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines child labor as any activity that physically, mentally and/or morally abuses children, depriving them from their right to own their childhood. We’ve seen that despite some positive developments towards the beginning of the decade, the average number of hours worked by children aged 7-14 have spiked again towards the later years. This is true for both working only, and working & studying children. There is also no difference on the gender levels – both females and males have seen an increase in the average number of hours worked in recent years. Looking more granularly at the country distribution, we can spot that, indeed, a lot of positive development has happened across the world. But positive development is unfortunately not enough, when there is still one child out there deprived from his/her childhood. To be able to gain a better insight into what drives child labor, we look at a country-level comparison, where we contrast mature markets with almost nil child labor levels to countries in a more developing stage. As a case study, we look at Turkey and Egypt (both with huge populations and large economies) vs. France, Germany and the UK. The first metric we look at is women employment; indeed, in the countries where women’s participation to the labor force is higher, child labor is lower. Second, we look at birth rates: in the countries where birth rates were much higher, child labor was definitely more prevalent. Makes sense, no? The higher the number of mouths to feed, the higher the income needed! We also look at the levels healthcare spending in these countries – needless to say, the charts speak for themselves. Child labor is directly related to the household’s overall financial and well-being state. In countries where healthcare is expensive, unreliable or simply unattainable, the likelihood for falling sick is higher, putting the responsibility of feeding a household on the youngsters of the latter.We strive for a better world for the next generation, while completely ignoring the current one. How can we build a better future for children, if we are building it on the backs of children?
Meet Denis Mukwege, medicine graduate, founder of the the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, a 2018 Nobel prize winner for his effort “to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”
Now meet Thato Zungy, a school dropout, grew up to face prison after being addicted to drugs and being involved with gangsters
Two different educational backgrounds, Two different paths, Two different influence on the society
Due to the huge benefits that it brings to the individual development and the society as a whole, Education is a crucialmatter that pushed UNICEF to declare a national emergency to deal with the shocking 80 million childrendropping out of school without completing the basic schooling, despite the global efforts to promote primary education
The map below shows the top 40 countries with the highest average of Children out of school. As shown, 38 out of the 40 countries are in Africa, with Somalia recording the highest average of all (83.92)
Despite the efforts that some government make to promote primary education, some countries still witness a high average of dropouts from primary schooling. The bar chart shows the percentage of expenditure on primary education out of the government expenditure on education compared to the average children out of school. Haiti is among the top countries in Average Expenditure on primary education out of the government expenditure on education (64.9%), and still, its ranked 7th in the world with the highest average of drooped out(54.40%)
According to the UNICEF wars and disasters, discrimination based on gender, child marriage are factors that keep the children out of schools. Poverty is also considered a main barrier to education, where children are forced into employment at a very young age to accommodate the living demands. Going back to Somalia example, 43.5% of children aged 7-14 are working instead of being at school. Same with the Haiti example, despite the huge expenditure on primary education, 35.60% of children are in employment.
Solving this issue requires the collaboration of the government, schools and community
On a government level, increase the number of schools to avoid crowded classes and implement legislation that protects the right of education for every child. According to UNESCO and UNICEF new policies should focus on the most marginalized children to easy the access to education and improve its quality. This can be achieved by gathering information about the children, their addresses and if they attended school or are likely to do so.
On a community level, awareness should be spread especially among parents by showcasing the downside of dropping schools and its effect on the society
On a school level, Systemic Renewal must be adopted which is the continuous process of assessing goals and objectives associated to school policies, practices, and organizational structures as they have a direct impact on a wide group of learners.
Implementing those steps will have its reflection on the society by reducing the rate of crimes and violence and poverty, economic growth, and equality among genders as well as inspiring good health.
Depression, mood disorders, extreme anxiety and .. suicide.
Ignoring human well-being and setting people’s depression as less important issues to look after might have very dramatic impacts on countries sustainability. And that is why, ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being come as third goal of the Sustainable Development Goals. Psychological struggles of people from different countries make negative impacts on people, however, in Russia, one half of the population is affected by their depression and sometimes escaping from their realities to suicide!
Statistical reports showed that Russian male have the highest suicide mortality rates globally. Also, Russian male suicide rates exceed those of Russian females by almost 5.8 times!
Where, as shown below, over the last 20 years Russia has male suicide mortality rate of 70.6 per 100,000 male population on average, while for females it is 12.88 per 100,000 female population on average.
These heartbreakingly high ratios are urgent stimulates to go beyond the data to investigate about possible reasons that lead males to suicide.
In general, many factors and causes could be reasons behind the suicide, and as Dr. Alexandre Fleischmann says “Suicide is a complex phenomenon “. However, there must be a key reason that leads Russian men, in specific, to commit suicide more than anywhere else.
After a deeper investigation, results showed that alcohol consumption among males in Russia could be an important cause for suicide. Alcohol plays a role in lowering persons’ inhibitions , leading them to act suicidal thoughts. In addition, alcohol consumption deepens the negative emotions, increasing the chance for people to get into depression, anger, and eventually, suicide.
As show in the figure below, Russia has the highest rate of alcohol consumption among its male population globally.
Finally, our mental health and well-being is not a secondary issue to take care of. Therefore, effective strategies and raising awareness are needed to treat depression, maintain people’s psychological health, and to prevent suicide.
One morning in February, in Kaffrine Region, Senegal, Kaffia Diallo emerged from her tent. She is happy; her new grandson was born just two days earlier. “A beautiful baby,” she said, “although I wish he weighed a little more.”
Following tradition, they will wait seven days before giving him a name. Surrounded by their herds of cows, sheep and goats, Kaffia helped her daughter with the birth in their tent in the middle of the brush, far from the closest medical center. This is nothing new for Kaffia. She comes from a family of livestock herders who seasonally move their herds from one place to another, along with some 800,000 herders in Senegal and millions of others throughout the Sahel.
´One billion children at ‘extremely high risk’ of the impacts of the climate crisis – UNICEF.
´Young people living in the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau are the most at risk of the impacts of climate change, threatening their health, education, and protection, and exposing them to deadly diseases, according to a UNICEF report.
Global average temperatures have increased by more than 1℃ since pre-industrial times. Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – are a primary driver of climate change – and present one of the world’s most pressing challenges. … Overall, this would amount to an average temperature rise of 1.1℃
CO2emissions have increased by about 90%, with emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributing about 78% of the gas emissions increase from 1960 to 2020.
Over the entire industrial era, some 2.3 trillion tons of carbondioxide have been released to the atmosphere. …
One of the most promising initiatives and projects are the Carbon Capture Capacity projects.
Globally, there are 15 large-scale CCS projects in operation, with a further seven under construction.
The total CO2 capture capacity of these 22 projects is around 40 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa).
