The majority of Countdown countries did not reach the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG 4) on reducing child mortality, despite the fact that donor funding to the health sector has drastically increased. When tracking aid invested in child survival, previous studies have exclusively focused on... aid targeting reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH). We take a multi-sectoral approach and extend the estimation to the four sectors that determine child survival: health (RMNCH and non-RMNCH), education, water and sanitation, and food and humanitarian assistance (Food/HA). Methods and findings: Using donor reported data, obtained mainly from the OECD Creditor Reporting System and Development Assistance Committee, we tracked the level and trends of aid (in grants or loans) disbursed to each of the four sectors at the global, regional, and country levels. We performed detailed analyses on missing data and conducted imputation with various methods. To identify aid projects for RMNCH, we developed an identification strategy that combined keyword searches and manual coding. To quantify aid for RMNCH in projects with multiple purposes, we adopted an integrated approach and produced the lower and upper bounds of estimates for RMNCH, so as to avoid making assumptions or using weak evidence for allocation. We checked the sensitivity of trends to the estimation methods and compared our estimates to that produced by other studies. Our study yielded time-series and recipient-specific annual estimates of aid disbursed to each sector, as well as their lower- and upper-bounds in 134 countries between 2000 and 2014, with a specific focus on Countdown countries. We found that the upper-bound estimates of total aid disbursed to the four sectors in 134 countries rose from US$ 22.62 billion in 2000 to US$ 59.29 billion in
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From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic until August 2021, extreme weather events have affected at least 139.2 million people and killed at least 17,242 people in at least 433 unique events. These figures are certainly an underestimate, as they do not include estimates of numbers of people affected ...by extreme temperatures, or mortality during drought events.
One dimension of the compound risk of COVID-19 and climate extremes was the additional challenge of preparing for and responding to disasters during the pandemic, such as the constraints of physical distancing during evacuations and response operations.
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has launched a new Compendium of forgotten foods in Africa which is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive collection of 100 African forgotten food crops.
Also referred to as neglected, underutilized or orphan crops, these species offer valua...ble benefits, including nutrition and diet diversification, while supporting resilient, climate-smart agriculture but they are at risk of being lost as foods such as maize, rice and wheat dominate African diets.
The compendium list includes details on each crop's botanical classification, agroecological suitability, agronomic requirements, traditional and medicinal uses, value-added prospects and nutritional content. Among the entries are: African locust beans, African nightshade, baobab, Bambara nut, bush mango, cassava, fonio, marula, moringa, teff and tigernut.
Produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s Regional Office for Africa with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the Compendium is a direct response to the UN Food Systems Summit and the Call for Collective Action in the Global Manifesto on Forgotten Foods.
Embracing both agricultural heritage and innovation can transform agrifood systems across Africa. By cataloguing these forgotten or underutilized crops, traditional knowledge is being honoured in the push to unlock the potential for better nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and resilience against the climate crisis.
In a joint foreword to the publication, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa Abebe Haile-Gabriel and FARA Executive Director Aggrey Agumya urged the mainstreaming of forgotten foods into African agrifood systems.
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2016 Update
Key population
This Topic Guide has been compiled to provide an overview of undernutrition in the context of development. The focus of the Guide is on undernutrition, defined as the outcome of insufficient (quantity and quality) of food intake (hunger) and repeated infectious diseases. Undernutrition includes bein...g underweight for one’s age, too short for one’s age (stunted), underweight for one’s height (wasted), and deficient in vitamins and minerals (micronutrient malnutrition). This review does not focus on the other component of malnutrition, which is overnutrition
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A companion to the Child Friendly Schools Manual
WASH in Schools aims to improve the health and learning performance of school-aged children – and, by extension, that of their families – by reducing the incidence of water and sanitation-related diseases. Every child friendly school r...equires appropriate WASH initiatives that keep the school environment clean and free of smells and inhibit the transmission of harmful bacteria, viruses and parasites.
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This report brings attention to achieving gender equality in the context of women, girls, and the HIV response. This six-month consultation in 2016 with adolescent women and young girls found that #WhatWomenWant is: collaboration and joint action by all to invest in women's HIV and Sexual and Reprod...uctive Health and Rights (SRHR), to be leaders and articulate the priorities of women and girls in all their diversity, and to speak to the new Political Declaration on AIDS and the SDG framework as a tool for civil society to meet their agenda to achieve gender equality in the HIV and SRHR response.
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Lancet Planet Health 2021; 5: e415–25
Conflict, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic effects of the Ukraine crisis are interacting to create new and worsen existing hunger hotspots, reversing the gains families had made to escape poverty.
Webinar.
The purpose of this booklet is to help readers understand why data on children with disabilities are currently inadequate, the difficulties that surround the gathering of high-quality data on disabled children, and why there is a real need to improve the collection, analysis, dissemination... and use of disability data.
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Bulletin of the World Health Organization; http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.16.176677
Progress report of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee (A/HRC/33/53) (Advance edited version)
International Development vol. 11. DOI 10.4073/csr.2015.15
During the past five decades, the incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold. Some 50–100 million new infections are estimated to occur annually in more than 100 endemic countries, with a documented further spread to previously unaffected areas; every year hundreds of thousands of severe cases ari...se, including 20 000 deaths; 264 disability-adjusted life years per million population per year are lost , at an estimated cost for ambulatory and hospitalized cases of US$ 514–1394, often affecting very poor populations. The true numbers are probably far worse, since severe underreporting and misclassification of dengue cases have been documented.
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This technical brief was developed by the UNFPA Global Ageing Network to complement the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' (UN DESA) Issue Brief: Older Persons and COVID-19, which emphasized the humanitarian imperative of addressing older persons' specific needs within preparedness and re...sponse to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Conflict, climate crisis and COVID-19 pose great threats to the health of women and children.