Posts tagged ‘World Health Organization’

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31/01/2014

Environment: Browner, but greener | The Economist

China stands out for its greenness in a new environmental ranking

CHINA is the world’s biggest polluter, so it is no surprise that it fares poorly on some measures of pollution in a new global index of environmental performance. The shock is that it also stands out for its world-beating greenness in other areas on the same index.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a joint product of America’s Yale and Columbia universities, is the latest volume in a long-running biennial ranking of 178 countries on a variety of measures of environmental performance. New this year are assessments of performance in waste-water treatment and combating climate change, as well as the clever use of satellite data (to track trends in forestry and air pollution) in order to top up traditional computer modelling and official data.

The report’s conclusions are more cheerful than most green report cards. The experts believe countries are doing well in improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and in bringing down child mortality. However, the global trends are worrying in other areas like fisheries, wastewater treatment and air quality. Overall, Switzerland came out top. Somalia came last. China was 118th, a middling ranking that beats India (155th) but falls well below South Africa (72nd), Russia (73rd) and Brazil (77th).

However, that average masks a huge divergence in China’s performance in two areas. Using satellite data, the boffins worked out, for the first time, what global exposures were to fine particulate matter (known as PM2.5) from 2000 to 2012. China ranked at the bottom on air pollution, with nearly all of its population exposed to levels of PM2.5 pollution deemed unhealthy by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Though less frequently criticised than Beijing, Delhi’s air is also terrible—but China as a whole fares worse. In 2012 the average human exposure to PM2.5 for all of China was 48 micrograms per cubic metre, but the national figure for India was only 32 units (the WHO says anything above 10 units is unhealthy).

The surprise is that China has done very well on carbon. The experts calculate that, unusually among big emerging economies, it slowed the rate at which its greenhouse-gas emissions have grown in the past decade. That is partly a natural result of its development, which has led to investment in better technology and cleaner industries, but it is also thanks to policies to improve efficiency and boost renewable energy.

Environmentalists the world over can breathe a little easier knowing that the biggest global polluter has started to slow the rise in its greenhouse-gas emissions and may one day even reduce them. If only China’s urban residents could breathe a little easier, too.

via Environment: Browner, but greener | The Economist.

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16/01/2014

India Is Polio-Free for 3rd Year, but It Can’t Afford to Be Complacent | TIME.com

Good news does not always flow freely in India. Too many children still go hungry. Violence against women endures. Inflation is soaring, and gay sex was just criminalized, again.

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But today India got a boost: Jan. 13 marks the country’s third year of being free of polio, the highly infectious disease that attacks the nervous system of children in particular and can paralyze within hours. The last child to be crippled by polio in India was a 2-year-old girl in West Bengal, whose case was confirmed on Jan. 13, 2011. The fact that none have been found since is a stunning turnaround from 2009, when India hosted nearly half the world’s cases. That polio has been wiped from this vast, crowded country is arguably one of the greatest achievements in modern public health — and a stirring reminder that sheer determination can, in fact, change lives.

People used to say that ridding India of polio simply couldn’t be done. The virus has used the subcontinent as an incubator for centuries, and some experts argued that the slow process of vaccinating every child could never outpace the rapid transmission of the disease. Happily, they were wrong. Teaming up with groups like Rotary International, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO), the Indian government launched yearly national vaccination drives carried out by millions of volunteers and, eventually, backed up by sophisticated disease-surveillance and population-monitoring systems. In 2002, there were 1,600 polio cases in India. By 2009, there were 741. Today, there are none.

via India Is Polio-Free for 3rd Year, but It Can’t Afford to Be Complacent | TIME.com.

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13/12/2013

Beijing to buy new buses to clear city smog: media | Reuters

China\’s capital Beijing, regularly shrouded in hazardous air pollution, plans to replace its oil-burning buses with greener models by 2017 to help clear the smog, state news agency Xinhua said.

Residents wearing masks ride their electric bicycles on a street amid heavy haze in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province December 5, 2013. REUTERS/China Daily

Nearly 14,000 new buses powered by electricity or natural gas will be bought to replace two-thirds of Beijing\’s bus fleet and halve carbon emissions, Xinhua said on Thursday, citing the city\’s environment and transportation authorities.

Air pollution in Beijing hit unprecedented levels in January when an index measuring particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) shot up to a staggering 755 – 38 times the level recommended by the World Health Organisation.

China\’s worsening air quality is a result of it chasing economic growth at all cost in the past 30 years, a pursuit that turned it into the world\’s second-biggest economy, but which also poisoned much of its air, water and soil.

Rising public concern over the health dangers of China\’s air pollution has worried its stability-obsessed leaders, who fear the issue may become a rallying point for wider dissatisfaction.

China has adopted an emergency response program to try to reduce the pollution, including alternating days for cars with odd and even license plates to be on the road and closing schools when the smog is particularly heavy.

via Beijing to buy new buses to clear city smog: media | Reuters.

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11/12/2013

China Explores Smoking Ban in Effort to Reduce Tobacco-Related Deaths – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Chinese officials are exploring ways to curb smoking as deaths mount and medical costs rise, an effort that has generated one proposal to take apart the nation’s vast and politically connected government-run tobacco monopoly.

Within the next year, China’s legislators will accelerate efforts to enact a national regulation banning smoking in public places in China, said Yang Jie, deputy director of Tobacco Control Office for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, at a news briefing on tobacco-related health problems in China. Mr. Yang said China’s State Council, the country’s cabinet, is currently planning the regulation and it is expected to be enacted next year.

“We can see what is happening in the rest of the world,” said Mr. Yang, suggesting that China is due to follow the smoking cessation trends of other countries.

The statement follows the release of a book by China’s Central Party School, an elite Chinese Communist Party think tank, in recent months urging officials to shake up China’s tobacco monopoly, which is responsible for tobacco production and sales and has the freedom to donate to schools and sell cigarette cartons without pictures of black lungs for warnings. Its authors call for higher tobacco taxes, halting government financing to tobacco companies and encouraging them to find alternative business models.

China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration wasn’t immediately available for comment. The tobacco industry pulled in 865 billion yuan ($142.5 billion) from taxes and profit in 2012, up 16% from a year earlier, according to the State Tobacco administration.

A farmer smokes in a cabbage field in Huaiyuan county, eastern Anhui province. Associated Press

China is the world’s largest consumer and producer of tobacco, home to more than 300 million smokers and 43% of the world’s cigarette production, according to the American Cancer Society and the World Lung Foundation. Tobacco is also a leading cause of death in China, causing 1.2 million deaths annually and expected to cause 3.5 million deaths annually by 2030, the groups said.

Nearly nine out of 10 Chinese children aged 5 and 6 are able to identify at least one cigarette brand, according to a recent study by Johns Hopkins University on the effects of tobacco marketing on children in low- and middle-income countries. “Rather than thinking ‘I’m going to be Superman,’ young boys are aspiring to smoke,” said Bernhard Schwartländer, the World Health Organization’s representative in China.

via China Explores Smoking Ban in Effort to Reduce Tobacco-Related Deaths – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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10/12/2013

White-collar jobs for rural women needed to enhance gender equality – new book | India Insight

Family planning, health and education programmes have done a lot to improve the lives of women in rural India, but getting more young rural women to work in jobs that don’t involve wage labour is the next step for gender equality and the country’s economic health, according to Dr. Carol Vlassoff, author of a new book, “Gender Equality and Inequality in Rural India: Blessed with a Son.”

Vlassoff, 69, has been studying the village of Gove in Satara District of Maharashtra state since 1975. She determined through her work there that bringing rural women into the modern economy in India means making more job opportunities available to them, particularly professional, white-collar jobs.

Doing this also could lead to slowing population growth in India, one of the world’s most populous countries with an estimated 1.2 billion people. She found, according to a press statement accompanying the book, “that self-employed and professional rural women were more likely to use contraceptives and delay having their first child than unemployed women with the same amount of schooling.”

This, she said, also helps promote gender equality at a time when parents, although fond of their daughters, consider a son essential. Daughters can be a financial burden on parents because, despite the abolition of dowry, grooms’ parents often expect substantial gifts. As a result, in Gove and elsewhere, parents sometimes choose to abort a female fetus. Half of the women Vlassoff interviewed in the village said they knew of women who have done this, she said.

Vlassoff, who worked at the World Health Organization on women’s empowerment, has been conducting studies in the village, which now has a population of 3,600, since 1975. The nearly 500 women in her latest study are 15 to 49 years old.

via White-collar jobs for rural women needed to enhance gender equality – new book | India Insight.

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05/11/2013

Beijing slashes car sales quota in anti-pollution drive | Reuters

China\’s capital, Beijing, infamous for its thick smog and heavy traffic, will slash the city\’s new car sales quotas by almost 40 percent next year, as it looks to curb vehicle emissions and hazardous levels of pollution, the city government website said.

Lines of cars are pictured during a rush hour traffic jam on Guomao Bridge in Beijing July 11, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

The change in policy gives greater support for new, cleaner cars and could strengthen foreign carmakers\’ determination to accelerate growth in China\’s less crowded lower-tier cities.

In the last month alone, high levels of pollution have forced China to all but shut down the northeastern city of Harbin, a major urban center with a population of 11 million.

via Beijing slashes car sales quota in anti-pollution drive | Reuters.

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19/06/2013

China’s next food scandal: honey laundering

SCMP: “China‘s National Television has brought another case of “food forgery” to the spotlight in a country where fake eggs, beef and tofu have become staple items in national news coverage.

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Police in Chongqing‘s Hechuan district have discovered a production site for fake honey and confiscated about 500 kilograms of the fake nectar, the national broadcaster said in a report on Sunday.

“The artificial honey contained zero per cent real honey,” the report said, showing a chemical analysis report according to which the honey contained 187 milligrams of aluminium residue to every kilogram of honey.

The report has gone viral on Chinese microblogs, where it has been shared more than 300,000 times, making it one of the most trending topics on Wednesday. Newspapers have followed up with reports on how to identify fake honey.

“Artificial honey has a chemical odour, it either has a pungent or a fruity smell, whereas real, pure honey has a subtle scent of flowers,” one report reads.”

via China’s next food scandal: honey laundering | South China Morning Post.

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02/01/2013

* The Word From Beijing: Thank You for Not Smoking

WSJ: “China’s government has a New Year’s resolution: to stamp out smoking.

Leaders aim to reduce smokers to 25% of the population by 2015, down from 28% in 2010, according to a smoking-cessation plan the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published recently. The work of the ministries of health, finance and foreign affairs, as well as the administrations of tobacco, safety, customs, industry and commerce, it plots moves to ban smoking in public places and end ads and sponsorships by tobacco companies.

China is home to 300 million smokers, a quarter of the world total, and they burn up a third of the world’s cigarettes, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The stub-smoking initiative comes weeks after World Health Organization officials urged China’s government to reduce smoking rates by at least 30% by 2025 through programs teaching that habits such as tobacco use and excessive salt intake can lead to chronic diseases and early death.

Smoking-related sicknesses kill more than one million Chinese citizens each year, according to the WHO, and smoking contributes to the country’s high rates of chronic disease—which accounts for 80% of deaths and 70% of health expenditure.

Critics of China’s tobacco plan say enforcement details are lacking. A smoking ban in public places such as hotels and restaurants, announced in 2011, has been only loosely applied.

“Apart from the legal codes legislated by various local governments on banning smoking and installing ‘no smoking’ signs in public places, there are hardly any specific rules to enforce the ban,” an editorial in the state-owned China Daily said, adding, “Besides, very few smokers have received due punishment violating the ban.” The editorial also notes that cigarette packages lack graphic health warnings—which in other parts of the world can include gruesome images.

Beijing has said long said it is determined to tackle the country’s smoking problem, but so far has had little success. Cigarettes remain cheap—available for less than $1 for a pack, according to the WHO, which recommended last year that China triple its tobacco tax to 70% to discourage young would-be smokers from buying.”

via The Word From Beijing: Thank You for Not Smoking – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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09/12/2012

* China to Flatten 700 Mountains to Build a City

Is there anything the Chinese won’t attempt?

Times: “Last month China made news with the surprising announcement that a firm in the city of Changsha would attempt to build the world’s tallest skyscraper in 90 days. Now, the country is making headlines with another ambitious challenge — flattening 700 mountains in order to build a city.

Lanzhou, China

The so-called “mountain-moving project,” was actually launched in October, and not only is the scale gargantuan, but the costs are astronomical. As much as $3.5 billion will be used to blow up 700 mountains, the Guardian reports, to make room for a full-fledged city in a poor, mountainous province in northwestern China. The country’s state council approved the plan in August after years of preparation, according to China Economic Weekly magazine.

The future city, called the Lanzhou New Area, will be built on the outskirts of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province with a population of 3.6 million. The company behind the proposal, China Pacific Construction Group,  promises to build an urban paradise, 10 square miles in size and capable of generating as much as $43 billion in GDP by 2030, China Daily reports.

The promotional video shows the new metropolis, which will cost another $11 billion to build, will be filled with high-rises, lakes, beaches and gardens.

It sounds grand — except for the fact that Lanzhou has some of the worst pollution in China, according to World Health Organization. Factories producing textiles, fertilizer and chemicals have clogged the air with smoke and particulates, while their waste has discolored the Yellow River, which runs through the province.

Experts have raised concerns about whether the project is environmentally viable. Gansu is an arid province, surrounded by deserts and scoured by sandstorms. But China Pacific Construction Group, one of the nation’s biggest construction companies, said there is no need to worry.

“Lanzhou’s environment is already really poor, it’s all desolate mountains which are extremely short of water,” a spokesperson told the Guardian via email. “Our protective style of development will divert water to the area, achieve reforestation and make things better than before.””

via China to Flatten 700 Mountains to Build a City | TIME.com.

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