The progress made in tobacco control is a sign of the growing success of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and provides strong evidence that there is political will for such control at both the national and global levels.
This week Daily Development focuses on health and tobacco. Long recognized as a major risk factor for noncommunicable diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, tobacco is estimated to kill nearly 6 million people each year. And with nearly 80% of the more than one billion smokers worldwide living in low- and middle-income countries, the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is greatest in the developing world.
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Since I launched the idea of microcredit in 1976, I have created many other businesses to help poor people help themselves. These experiences were summed up in the concept of social business, problem-solving companies without taking personal dividends beyond the investment money—a new form of capitalism designed to solve social problem around the world, writes Muhammad Yunus.
It’s a year since the Nutrition for Growth Summit was held in London.
For those of us closely involved in the run up and delivery of the summit it is great to see that there is still some momentum and focus on achieved commitments. As always there might be a danger that after the big splash the long journey of making significant changes becomes more of a ripple.
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Bridging the infrastructure gap, sharing the wealth, and investing natural resource revenues in people are Africa’s top policy priorities, African policymakers declared at a conference in Maputo, Mozambique.
In Rahdari village in Punjab’s Khushab district, farmers have taken up growing trees as a cash crop on barani, or rain-fed lands, where yields were often uncertain and usually poor.
“It’s like a bank account but with a difference,” says a beaming Ramzan, 36, referring to the trees he planted 5 years ago on half a hectare of land. “You water the trees and see them grow every day. And when you need the cash, you cut the tree and sell the wood.”
On the road leading to Kisuma, in the region of North Kivu, Furaha pauses briefly and wipes the sweat from her brow without removing the cloth sack she carries securely on her back.
“It’s even more tiring to put it on the ground and then pick it back up again,” she says. The sack weighs 15 kilograms. “And the mill is still three kilometers away.”