TOKYO, Jan 8 2010 (IPS) – Japan may be one the world biggest economies, but it is not immune to poverty.
Poverty has long existed in Japan and it is deteriorating in scale and depth dramatically in the past several years, says Dr. Aya Abe, senior researcher of the Department of International Research and Cooperation at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo.
Today, many children are living under extraordinary levels of poverty in Japan, as data show, he says.
According to Masanori Matsumura, a primary school teacher for 30 years, a growing number of children in Japan today cannot even afford classroom supplies such as paints or craft materials. He adds, The expanding poverty is hitting the most vulnerable victims – children. <…
In this column, Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News, writes that Europe’s insistence on austerity is wasting a generation by creating “disastrous” levels of unemployment. How many crises do we have to bear, Savio asks, before regulations eliminate risks from the banks and they are confined to the world of speculation?
ROME, Apr 24 2013 (IPS) – For a long time it was a given that while Europe was based on defending a more just society, with social values and solidarity, the United States was based on the glory of individualism and competition, and anything public was considered “socialist”.
Patient undergoing dialysis treatment at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. Credit: Rebecca Vassie
KAMPALA, Jun 15 2015 (IPS) – Vincent Mugyenyi, a 65-year-old retired pilot from the Ugandan Air Force, has lost count of how many dialysis treatment slots he has had to attend in the eight years he has been fighting chronic kidney disease.
He spends eight hours a week on a dialysis machine in Mulago National Referral Hospital that filters toxins from his blood, performing the functions of healthy kidneys.…
Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki pushing hard for UHC in Kenya. Credit: MOH Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 27 2019 (IPS) – Consider this. One million Kenyans fall into poverty every year due to catastrophic out of pocket health expenditures.
For the almost four in every five Kenyans who lack access to medical insurance, the fear that they are just an accident or serious illness away from destitution.
Ill health is easily the most destructive wrecking-ball to any country’s plans for sustainable development, which validates President Uhuru Kenyatta’s to deliver Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2022, as part of his Big Four development agenda.
The number of…
Rafiullah Wardak looks upon his newborn daughter Amina, recovering after being wounded by gunmen who stormed a maternity award in Kabul on May 19, 2020. Mr. Wardak’s wife, Nazeya, was among at least 24 people killed in the attack, including women, nurses, and newborns. Credit: Courtesy of the Rafiullah Wardak family published @csmonitor
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 26 2020 (IPS) – Consider this. 24 women, children and babies were murdered at a hospital in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Even by standards of a country as accustomed to bloodshed as Afghanistan, the May 12 attack on a .
That anyone could target women at their most vulnerable and infants in their first hours of l…