W hen a big earthquake, flash flood or other sudden disaster hits, aid agencies spring into action with emergency responses and public appeals for donations. With droughts, it's different.

The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure.

Cash-based interventions (CBIs), offer an interesting opportunity to prevent increases in wasting in humanitarian aid settings. However, questions remain as to the impact of CBIs on nutritional status and, therefore, how to incorporate them into emergency programmes to maximise their success in terms of improved nutritional outcomes. This study evaluated the effects of three different CBI modalities on nutritional outcomes in children under 5 y of age at 6 mo and at 1 y.

Exposure to ambient air pollution increases morbidity and mortality, and is a leading contributor to global disease burden. We explored spatial and temporal trends in mortality and burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution from 1990 to 2015 at global, regional, and country levels.

- Solar energy production in Pakistan is poised to take off - just as the South Asian country is ramping up coal production to help plug a crippling power crisis, energy experts say.

Notwithstanding Pakistan’s challenge to Jammu and Kashmir’s 330 mw Kishanganga hydro-electric project, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has directed the power ministry and the J&K government t

On 23 March 2017, the British Medical Association, in partnership with the Sustainable Development Unit for the health sector in England, released Ethical procurement for health: workbook 2.0, 1 a guide and workbook for protecting labour rights in medical supply chains. This is an update to a document released 6 years earlier in response to evidence of abuse of worker rights at several factories manufacturing health-care products destined for global markets.

Original Source

South Asia is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s population and is a region of dynamic economic growth, yet it performs relatively poorly on health and nutrition indicators.

he 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by countries at the United Nations in 2015 sets forth a comprehensive vision of development with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets across all aspects of society [1]. The 2030 Agenda document is ambitious and explicit about the need for integrated and sustained action across society to address complex challenges such as ending extreme poverty, reducing widening economic inequality, tackling climate change, and reducing and preventing conflict.

South Asia despite decreasing rates of infectious disease, accounts for a significant proportion of their global burden. The sub-continent is also in the midst of rapid economic growth; large scale changes in land use, access to water and sanitation, and agricultural production; environmental degradation; and technological transformation, all against a background of uneven health system capacity. South Asia, defined by the World Bank as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, is home to a quarter of the world’s population.

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