(Press-News.org) Societies are failing women, children and adolescents, particularly in the poorest communities around the world, and urgent action is needed to save lives and improve health, say global health experts.
In a special supplement published today by The BMJ, public health experts from around the globe highlight the critical actions and investments that will have the greatest impact on the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents.
The 15 papers in this special supplement outline the current evidence, identify successes as well as critical gaps in progress, and highlight key priorities to end preventable deaths and ensure that women, children and adolescents can thrive and build resilient and prosperous societies.
Dr Marleen Temmerman, Director of WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research including HRP, and one of the lead authors of the special supplement states, "Clearly business as usual will not work. For women, children and adolescents around the world to survive, thrive and transform our current society to arrive at the future we want, we need radical actions that will result in enormous social, demographic, and economic benefits."
Although great strides have been made in reducing child and maternal mortality by 53% and over 40%[1] respectively since 1990, the authors explain how many more lives can be saved by improving access to essential health interventions.
Vast inequities within and between countries mean that the poorest, most disadvantaged women, children, and adolescents often miss out on life-saving health services and experience serious violations of their human rights.
Some low- and middle-income countries have:
Up to three times more pregnancies among teenage girls in rural and indigenous populations than in urban populations
A difference of up to 80% between the richest and poorest people in the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel
A gap of at least 18% in the proportion who seek care for children with pneumonia symptoms, between the poorest and richest people and
A difference of least 25% in access to antenatal care (of at least four visits) between the most and least educated and between the richest and poorest.
"No woman, child or adolescent should face a greater risk of preventable death just because of where they live," says Dr Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization. "We know what needs to be done. With the existing evidence, we now have the opportunity to end preventable deaths among all women, children, and adolescents, to vastly improve their health, and to bring about the transformative changes needed to fully realise their human rights and build resilient and prosperous societies."
The papers published today provide the evidence that has helped inform the development of a new Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health, which will be launched at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 26 September 2015.
As the deadline for the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals approaches, countries have come together to agree upon a new set of development goals, which will be launched also in New York this month. The survival, health and well-being of women, children and adolescents is at the heart of this agenda, and the new Global Strategy to prevent deaths and improve the health of millions of women, children and adolescents will provide a platform for the achievement of these new goals.
The new Global Strategy builds on new evidence and lessons learnt. It focuses on reaching everyone, in particular critical population groups many of whom live in humanitarian and fragile settings - where a majority of these deaths happen.
INFORMATION:
Montreal, September 14, 2015 - Using extensive genetic data compiled by the UK10K project, an international team of researchers led by Dr. Brent Richards of the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital has identified a genetic variant near the gene EN1 as having the strongest effect on bone mineral density (BMD) and fracture identified to date. The findings are published in the forthcoming issue of the prestigious journal Nature.
"EN1 has never before been linked to osteoporosis in humans, so this opens up a brand new pathway to pursue in developing drugs to ...
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A study three years ago sparked a medical mystery when it revealed a part of the brain not found in any present-day anatomy textbooks.
Recently, Indiana University computational neuroscientist Franco Pestilli and an international research team published an article in the journal Cerebral Cortex that suggests this missing part of the brain may play an important role in how we understand the world -- despite getting "lost" for more than a century.
A long flat bundle of nerves called the vertical occipital fasciculus, or VOF, the structure appeared ...
Researchers at Cardiff University have devised a way of increasing the yield of biodiesel by using the waste left over from its production process.
Using simple catalysis, the researchers have been able to recycle a non-desired by-product produced when biodiesel is formed from vegetable oil, and convert this into an ingredient to produce even more biodiesel.
It is believed this new process will have significant environmental benefits by improving the yield of biodiesel in a sustainable way that doesn't require the use of additional fossil fuels, and could potentially ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Terahertz radiation could one day provide the backbone for wireless systems that can deliver data up to one hundred times faster than today's cellular or Wi-Fi networks. But there remain many technical challenges to be solved before terahertz wireless is ready for prime time.
Researchers from Brown University have taken a major step toward addressing one of those challenges. They've developed what they believe to be the first system for multiplexing terahertz waves. Multiplexers are devices that enable separate streams of data to ...
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Vitamin D insufficiency among the elderly is highly correlated with accelerated cognitive decline and impaired performance, particularly in domains such as memory loss that are associated with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, researchers with the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center and Rutgers University have found. The effect is "substantial," with individuals with low vitamin D declining at a rate three times faster than those with adequate vitamin D levels.
The researchers said their findings amplify the importance of identifying vitamin D ...
Vitamin D insufficiency was associated with faster decline in cognitive functions among a group of ethnically diverse older adults, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology.
In addition to promoting calcium absorption and bone health, vitamin D may influence all organ systems. Both the vitamin D receptor and the enzyme that converts 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) to the active form of the vitamin are expressed in all human organs, including the brain. Thus, research has increasingly examined the association between vitamin D status and a variety of health ...
To encourage hospitals to improve quality of care, Medicare penalizes those with higher than expected rates of readmission within 30 days of discharge. The logic behind the penalties is that if patients receive high quality care, including proper discharge planning, they should be less likely to end up back in the hospital.
This seems straightforward, but it turns out that the social and clinical characteristics of a hospital's patient population that are not included in Medicare's calculation explain nearly half of the difference in readmission rates between the best- ...
Black children were less likely to receive any pain medication for moderate pain and less likely to receive opioids for severe pain than white children in a study of racial disparities in the pain management of children with appendicitis in emergency departments, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
Racial and ethnic differences in the emergency department (ED) management of pain have been described, with lower rates of opioid prescription for black and Hispanic patients than for white patients. However, there are fewer studies in children. Appendicitis ...
The largest population genome sequencing effort to date is published today in Nature. A series of papers describing resources and application of the data is published at the same time in Nature, Nature Genetics, Bioinformatics and Nature Communications.
Rare genetic variants are changes in DNA that are carried only by relatively few people in a population. The UK10K study was designed to explore the contribution of these rare genetic variants to human disease and its risk factors.
"The project has made important new contributions towards describing the role of rare ...
This news release is available in Spanish.
Final OS and subgroup analysis of the pivotal study SAR-3007
First interim results of the Y-IMAGE prospective study showing real-world data for trabectedin in advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS)
Clinical data of trabectedin in translocated-related sarcomas, and in advanced leiomyosarcomas and liposarcomas
Early clinical studies of PM1183 in combination with paclitaxel or cisplatin show a synergistic activity
Madrid, September 14, 2015: PharmaMar announces that it will show new data from clinical pivotal ...
