PURPOSe study: understanding the burden of stillbirths in south Asia

Joao Paulo Souza & Rajiv Bahl

The Lancet | Open Access | Published: July, 2022 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00218-2

Stillbirth prevention is a global health priority and a crucial step towards better maternal and newborn health and wellbeing.¹ In 2019, 2 million babies were stillborn, with over three-quarters of these stillbirths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.² However, progress has been slow, and unless there is a substantial acceleration in progress, the Sustainable Development Goal target 3.2 and Every Newborn Action Plan target of 12 stillbirths per 1000 births will not be met by 2030.³ Slow progress is partly due to the limited emphasis on stillbirth reduction in maternal and child health programmes and a paucity of accurate, complete, and actionable information on stillbirths, particularly in high-burden areas.¹, ⁴

Do hospital facilities influence global cancer surgery outcomes?

Deo Suryanarayana & Prashant Gupta

The Lancet | Open Access | Published: May 24, 2022 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00214-5

Cancer is emerging worldwide as a significant public health problem and trends indicate that low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) are going to witness a substantial increase in cancer burden by 2040.¹ Surgery plays a vital role in the management of solid tumours, but only 25% of the global population has access to safe, affordable, and timely surgery.² This disparity is more pronounced in LMICs dealing with high cancer burden and limited resources. Timely access to quality multidisciplinary care is a critical factor determining outcomes. Surgical outcomes are reliant on the experience and skills of the surgeon, and the availability of ancillary support facilities. Cancer surgery outcomes have improved during the past three decades, primarily because of the advancements made in surgery, anaesthesia, surgical technology, perioperative, and critical care domains.^3  4 Operative mortality in patients receiving complex cancer surgeries such as Whipple’s resection and oesophagectomy has reduced drastically.⁵ However, most of these studies originate from tertiary care cancer centres in high-income countries, and there is little literature available related to cancer surgical outcomes from LMICs.

Climate change is turning more of Central Asia into desert

The rapid expansion will have significant impacts on ecosystems and the people and animals who rely on them.

Giorgia Guglielmi

Nature | June 16, 2022

The spread of deserts in Uzbekistan and neighbouring countries will alter the composition of ecosystems.Credit: Matyas Rehak/Shutterstock

As global temperatures rise, desert climates have spread north by up to 100 kilometres in parts of Central Asia since the 1980s, a climate assessment reveals¹.

The study, published on 27 May in Geophysical Research Letters, also found that over the past 35 years, temperatures have increased across all of Central Asia, which includes parts of China, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In the same period, mountain regions have become hotter and wetter — which might have accelerated the retreat of some major glaciers.

Such changes threaten ecosystems and those who rely on them, says Jeffrey Dukes, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California. The findings are a “great first step” towards informing mitigation and adaptation policies, he says.

WTO decides: no TRIPS waiver

Trade delegates and WTO Secretariat celebrate package of documents issued at the end of the Ministerial Conference, yet outlook for Global South remains bleak

Peoples Health Dispatch | June 17, 2022

Activists stage a “die-in” action at the WTO Ministerial Conference to protest the lack of TRIPS waiver (Photo: Our World is Not for Sale

The WTO announced on June 17 that it had reached an agreement on the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver. The deal has been criticized by people’s movements around the world as the WTO decidedly rejected the demand by health activists for a full TRIPS waiver.

The ministerial decision on the TRIPS agreement, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, was announced in the early morning in Geneva on June 17, almost two days after the expected end of the 12th Ministerial Conference. Although the decision was hailed by the WTO Secretariat and officials from the Global North as an unprecedented result, in practice it falls short of meeting the bare minimum of the world’s needs.

Debunking Noam Chomsky’s Tirade Against Lenin

Caleb Maupin | June 08, 2022

“Sri Lanka needs a strong public distribution system, wealth tax and universal welfare measures”

In the second part of an interview with Peoples Dispatch, Ahilan Kadirgamar analyzes the economic crisis faced by Sri Lanka and talks about the steps that need to be taken urgently

Peoples Dispatch | June 18, 2022

In the second part of an interview with Peoples Dispatch, Ahilan Kadirgamar, senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, details the economic crisis that has engulfed Sri Lanka. He explains why shortages of essentials have continued over the months, and the inability of the government to tackle it.

He also talks about how Sri Lanka has already begun to adopt IMF policies before even signing an agreement and how this is affecting the country. He lists out the steps that need to be taken urgently to protect livelihoods and ensure the future of the next generation.

Watch the first part of the interview on the political crisis here:

Book: Truth and Lies about the famine in Ukraine, by Nikos Mottas

In Defense of Communism | June 18, 2022

The mythology surrounding the so-called Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, is exposed in a concise 78-pages book edited by Nikos Mottas and published in Greek language by Atexnos Publishing House.

For many decades, the issue of the Ukrainian famine in 1932-33, the famous Holodomor, occupies a prominent place in the arsenal of anti-communism. Especially after the counter-revolutionary overthrows in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, the Holodomor is at the forefront of a systematic and persistent attempt to vilify socialism of the 20th century and present it as an evil, inhumane system which is supposedly responsible for millions of deaths.