Blog - Page 155 of 205 - OneWorld SouthAsia

Revealed: The Shocking Extent of Exploitative Baby Formula Milk Marketing

Inter Press Service

-

9 May 2022

Revealed: The Shocking Extent of Exploitative Baby Formula Milk Marketing

The global formula milk industry, valued at some 55 billion US dollars, is targeting new mothers with personalised social media content that is often not recognisable as advertising.

By Baher Kamal

The world’s leading health and children specialised organisations have once again sounded the alarm bell about what they classify as “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits.

On this, the World Health Organization (WHO) at the end of April this year explained that formula milk companies are paying social media platforms and influencers to gain direct access to pregnant women and mothers at some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives.

The global formula milk industry, valued at some 55 billion US dollars, is targeting new mothers with personalised social media content that is often not recognisable as advertising.

The new WHO report titled Scope and impact of digital marketing strategies for promoting breast-milk substitutes has outlined the digital marketing techniques designed to influence the decisions new families make on how to feed their babies.

Business buys, collects personal information

“Through tools like apps, virtual support groups or ‘baby-clubs’, paid social media influencers, promotions and competitions and advice forums or services, formula milk companies can buy or collect personal information and send personalised promotions to new pregnant women and mothers.”

The report summarises findings of new research that sampled and analysed 4 million social media posts about infant feeding published between January and June 2021 using a commercial social listening platform.

These posts reached 2.47 billion people and generated more than 12 million likes, shares or comments.

Three times as much

Formula milk companies post content on their social media accounts around 90 times per day, reaching 229 million users; representing three times as many people as are reached by informational posts about breastfeeding from non-commercial accounts.

This pervasive marketing is increasing purchases of breast-milk substitutes and therefore dissuading mothers from breastfeeding exclusively as recommended by WHO.

“The promotion of commercial milk formulas should have been terminated decades ago,” said Dr Francesco Branca, Director of the WHO Nutrition and Food Safety department.

More and more powerful marketing techniques

“The fact that formula milk companies are now employing even more powerful and insidious marketing techniques to drive up their sales is inexcusable and must be stopped.”

The report compiled evidence from social listening research on public online communications and individual country reports of research that monitors breast-milk substitute promotions, as well as drawing on a recent multi-country study of mothers’ and health professionals’ experiences of formula milk marketing.

The studies show how misleading marketing reinforces myths about breastfeeding and breast milk and undermines women’s confidence in their ability to breastfeed successfully.

Blatant breaches of law

The proliferation of global digital marketing of formula milk blatantly breaches the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (the Code), which was adopted by the 1981 World Health Assembly.

The Code is a landmark public health agreement designed to protect the general public and mothers from aggressive marketing practices by the baby food industry that negatively impact breastfeeding practices.

“Despite clear evidence that exclusive and continued breastfeeding are key determinants of improved lifelong health for children, women and communities, far too few children are breastfed as recommended. If current formula milk marketing strategies continue, that proportion could fall still further, boosting companies’ profits.”

Industry to stop, governments to act

WHO has called on the baby food industry to end exploitative formula milk marketing, and on governments to protect new children and families by enacting, monitoring and enforcing laws to end all advertising or other promotion of formula milk products.

This is the first time WHO has used a social media intelligence platform to generate insight into the marketing practices of multi-national formula milk manufacturers and distributors.

Social media intelligence platforms monitor social media for mentions of defined key words or phrases, which they gather, organise and analyse.

This industry standard approach “listens” to the billions of daily exchanges and conversations that take place amongst social media users around the world and on other digital platforms, such as websites and forums.

This investigation captured digital interactions that occurred between 1 January and 30 June 2021, referenced infant feeding across 11 languages and 17 countries, which together account for 61% of the global population and span all six WHO regions.

Pregnant women, exposed to aggressive marketing

Parents and pregnant women globally are exposed to aggressive marketing for baby formula milk, according to a report launched jointly by two UN agencies last February.

How marketing of formula milk influences our decisions on infant feeding, the first report in a series by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), draws on interviews with parents, pregnant women, and health workers in eight countries.

More than half of those surveyed acknowledged that they had been targeted by formula milk companies.

Unethical

UNICEF and WHO maintain that the formula milk industry uses systematic and unethical marketing strategies to influence parents’ infant feeding decisions and exploitative practices that compromise child nutrition and violate international commitments.

“This report shows very clearly that formula milk marketing remains unacceptably pervasive, misleading and aggressive,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, calling for regulations on exploitative marketing to be “urgently adopted and enforced to protect children’s health.”

The report found not only that industry marketing techniques include unregulated and invasive online targeting, but also sponsored advice networks and helplines; offered promotions and free gifts; and influenced health workers’ training and recommendations.

Surprised? Well, nobody should really be, now that the voracious push for making more profits and accumulating more money has already supplanted Nature and whatever is natural.

Image: Lucy Wolski / Unsplash

This piece has been sourced from Inter Press Service.

Fake Polio Vaccine Markings in Pakistan

OWSA Contributor

-

9 May 2022

0

Pakistan reported two polio cases from North Waziristan earlier in April, after a gap of 15 months. Now, health authorities say, polio vaccination teams in North Waziristan, under pressure to tick the boxes, were engaged in fake markings.

By Abdul Sattar

In the face of a barrage of questions over the re-emergence of polio, health authorities in North Waziristan say that vaccination teams were pressured by parents and villagers to falsely mark vaccinations.

The reporting of two cases of children with polio in North Waziristan in the month of April is a major setback, especially since no new cases were reported during the preceding 15 months. The World Health Organisation says that polio remains endemic in Pakistan and war-torn Afghanistan.

Now, the North Waziristan Additional District Health Officer, Dr Shams has put the blame squarely on the vaccination teams. He said that local polio vaccination teams were marking children as immunized without bothering to administer them vaccine.

Dr Shams told TNN that both the cases in the district were first since 2019. “The first case was reported from the Essuri area on 22 April while second case was reported from Mir Ali Shah Khadri area on 30 April,” he told journalists.

Dr Shams said that two years old girl was crippled by the virus in the second case.

He said that an emergency polio campaign has been undertaken in the district following the detection of the cases and children have been given injections, besides being administered polio drops.

However, he added both the children were left out in past polio campaigns.

He said that health authorities also held meetings with parents and area elders before the polio campaign. Besides, he added that another campaign will be launched later this month in the same area.

Parents refuse

Parents have misgivings about the polio vaccine and are refusing to cooperate with polio vaccination teams to administer the vaccine, the official said.

He cited the instance of a village named Khadri, with a population of hundreds of children, where parents were not allowing their children to be inoculated or vaccinated.

“During polio campaigns, these parents forced the polio vaccinators to mark their children as vaccinated,” he said. Besides, he added that the locals used to coerce the parents into fake markings.

On the other hand, he added, monitoring teams rarely ventured into the area for security reasons. However, he added that the recent immunization drive achieved complete vaccination with the cooperation of the law enforcement agencies.

Dr Shams said that type WPV was present in Bannu and its environs for past many years and its presence was also detected in environmental samples collected from the area.

He said the district had reported nine cases earlier in April 2009 while two more cases were reported last month.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 22 polio cases in 2020 and no case was reported earlier last year.

Fake markings

Dr Ayub Rose, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s former Director General Health too said that the affected children had neither received polio nor other vaccines.

He said that with no polio cases reported for over 15 months had given hope of Pakistan being declared polio free after three years. However, he regretted that people were falling for propaganda and were not inoculating their children.

Dr Rose said that emergence of polio cases in Pakistan and particularly in Pashtun belt was a worrying sign and that the fake marking remained a major issue in polio campaigns.

He said that to overcome this issue, health authorities have introduced a tracking system in six districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and this has been giving good results.

Abdul Sattar is a journalist based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, North-West Pakistan.

Image: UNICEF

Can AI-Designed Super Enzyme End Plastic Pollution Crisis?

Policy Circle

-

9 May 2022

0

Can AI-Designed Super Enzyme End Plastic Pollution Crisis?

The latest developments in plastics research offer hope. Researchers at the University of Texas have developed a super enzyme termed as hydrolase that can break down plastic in 24 hours, offering an effective way to tackle plastic pollution.

By Tara Nair

Last month, scientists at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam made a startling discovery – microplastics were detected in the blood samples of 80 per cent of the people tested for research. While plastic particles have earlier been detected in fish and other sea organisms, this was the first time that they were detected in human blood. The study showed that these particles may move freely around the body and lodge themselves in any of the organs. While its impact on health is yet to be ascertained, researchers are worried these particles could result in millions of early deaths every year.

The latest developments in plastics research offer hope. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed an enzyme that can break down plastic in 24 hours, offering a way to tackle the plastic waste crisis, say media reports. The scientists used artificial intelligence to produce an enzyme named hydrolase which can break down polyethylene terephthalate or PET, a common kind of plastic which comprises more than 12 per cent of the solid waste in the world.

A solution

Apart from problem of tackling the waste, this enzyme could also help companies recycle their products, helping create a circular plastics economy, according to a paper titled ‘Machine learning-aided engineering of hydrolases for PET depolymerization’, published last week in peer-reviewed journal Nature.

The earlier efforts to break down plastics using enzymes were not as successful because such chemicals are vulnerable in certain pH ranges and temperatures. The new enzyme does not have this drawback. The researchers claim that the enzyme could clean up landfills and dumping sites when used in ample quantities.

The world produces at least 400 million tonnes of plastic waste a year. Annual plastic production is expected to touch 1,100 million tonnes by 2050. More than a third of the global plastic output is used for packaging. Around 85 per cent of this ends up in landfills and a large quantity ends up in water bodies. More than 8 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans every year. The waste breaks down into microplastic particles and enter living organisms through food, water and air.

In a landmark development in March, 175 United Nations members agreed to sign a global agreement to tackle plastic pollution. The treaty is expected to tackle excess supply of plastics which are produced primarily by the hydrocarbon industry.

This piece has been sourced from Policy Circle — policycircle.org

Finding a Pathway Out of Genocide for Mynmar’s Rohingya

East Asia Forum

-

7 May 2022

0

Finding a Pathway Out of Genocide for Mynmar’s Rohingya

On 21 March 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States has determined that the acts committed against the Rohingya minority in 2017 constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. This determination draws attention to the systematic and large-scale atrocities committed under the Myanmar military (the Tatmadaw) and strengthens international pressure on the military regime that staged a coup in February 2021.

By Cecilia Jacob

In 2017, the Tatmadaw, air force, police force and armed civilians engaged in a systematic campaign of violence against the Rohingya. This included arbitrary arrest, torture, sexual violence, killing and forced displacement. Over 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee and at least 362 villages were partially or completely destroyed.

Genocide is a term given to the systematic and widespread targeting and killing of a population with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group’. Since it acceded to the Genocide Convention in 1988, the US government has only recognised eight situations as genocide, including this most recent determination. US President Joe Biden has labelled Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal on multiple occasions. Recently, Biden accused Putin of committing genocide in Ukraine. Although not an official determination, the Myanmar case is of interest beyond Myanmar given the proactive stance of the current US administration in calling out states for mass atrocities.

From a legal standpoint, the benchmark for determining genocide is higher than for crimes against humanity and war crimes, as proving intent as part of an organised policy of extermination requires demanding evidence. Yet the crime of genocide has a particular resonance given its association with exceptional cases of brutality such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

Responsibility to protect

The determination that a mass atrocity situation constitutes genocide is rare and implies political and moral responsibility for the United States to act — a key reason for restraint in making this determination. But what these actions should entail is indeterminate.

The United States will need to manage expectations that arise from its determination. Expectations are particularly strong from the population of Myanmar. Civilian protesters against the February 2021 military coup have invoked the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in calling for international assistance. The coup was led by the same general, Min Aung Hlaing, who was responsible for the 2017 Rohingya genocide — a link that will not go unnoticed by the active civilian opposition groups in Myanmar.

The US position, a response to calls from civil society and experts and its own investigations, will encourage members of the international community to take a stronger stance in calling out the Myanmar regime’s abuses. The US response to date, as with its Western counterparts, has been limited to sanctions, arms embargoes, humanitarian assistance and pressing for accountability. Unlike the situations in Ukraine and Syria, Washington has not provided military support to the armed opposition that would likely escalate the conflict and destabilise the country.

The genocide determination is unlikely to change that. But the United States followed its statement with a series of measures to pressure the military regime in Myanmar, including stepping up sanctions to cut arms supplies.

It has committed nearly US$1 million in new funding for the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which has already concluded that crimes against humanity falling within its mandate have likely been committed in Myanmar. By boosting capacity to investigate international crimes committed by the Tatmadaw, the additional funding will help provide concrete evidence required for legal proceedings against Myanmar’s military leaders.

Landmark moment

Current proceedings underway to hold Myanmar’s top generals accountable include a case brought by The Gambia at the International Court of Justice charging Myanmar’s military leaders with genocide and ongoing investigations into allegations of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Another case is underway in Argentina’s domestic courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction to try Myanmar’s military for genocide against the Rohingya.

Despite the progress made through formal accountability mechanisms, the situation for civilians in Myanmar is dire. The civilian opposition-led National Unity Government has called for a ‘People’s Defensive War’, which has resulted in nationwide conflict between the military and armed civilian opposition groups, with some support from ethnic armed organisations. Navigating this terrain to find a ‘pathway out of genocide’ as Blinken advocates will not be straightforward.

Rohingya testimonies of the brutality and terror they experienced at the hands of the Tatmadaw are conscious-shocking. Despite the lessons of 2017, the international response to the 2021 coup has been lukewarm, failing again to prevent ongoing human rights abuses.

The US determination is a landmark moment. The United States has taken a clear moral stance by calling out the brutality committed by Myanmar’s military for what it is — genocide and crimes against humanity. Other countries should follow the example set by it and other states such as The Gambia and Argentina.

The pathway out of genocide will require coordinated international measures to cut off the Myanmar military regime from funding, weapons, legitimacy and political support. Achieving this in a geopolitically divided international arena — when the world’s attention remains fixed on Russia and Ukraine — is a significant challenge.

Cecilia Jacob is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School, The Australian National University. She edits the journal Global Responsibility to Protect.

This piece has been sourced from the East Asia Forum of the Australian National University.

Image: Wikimedia

Red Cross Fund Document Takes Note of Civil Unrest in Sri Lanka

OWSA Contributor

-

7 May 2022

0

Red Cross Fund Document Takes Note of Civil Unrest in Sri Lanka

The Red Cross aid document has called this a fund for civil unrest – though the grant document alludes to the unrest being a civil society protest. The document says that the social and economic context is highly volatile in Sri Lanka.

The European Union (EU) will provide 200,000 Euros in humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka to support vulnerable families affected by the country’s ongoing economic crisis, the EU Delegation to Sri Lanka and Maldives said.

The fund will give priority to pregnant women, children, people with disabilities, women-headed households and people who have become vulnerable due to the crisis, a statement from the EU Delegation said.

“The current political and economic crisis has resulted in shortages of essential commodities, including of medicines, and has reduced the ability of thousands of families to cater for their basic needs,” the delegation said.

“Many children have also seen their education disrupted due to power cuts and lack of stationery items.”

Red Cross Fund

The funding complements a Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) provided by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

A DREF grant is a soft aid, not necessarily refundable, was released mid-April. The amount of CHF 691,002 released by IFRC works out to approximately 25 crore Sri Lankan Rupees (or 5.4 crore Indian Rupees) and will assist 400,000 people or about 80,000 families in all districts across Sri Lanka. 4,000 families will be provided with cash grants to the tune of CHF 65 to fulfil their basic needs within a month of providing the grant.

The DREF grant also allocates CHF 10,000 for consultants from the total grant money. A small amount of CHF 4,555 has also been kept aside for meeting the needs of volunteers.

The work to make this DREF grant operational on the ground will be carried out by the Sri Lana Red Cross Society (SLRCS).

“In this scenario of an impending humanitarian catastrophe where the vulnerable are made more destitute and helpless, the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society intends to intervene to mitigate suffering,” SLRCS says.

There is scope for DREF grants to be followed by an Appeal for aid in cash, kind and services. It is not clear, however, if an appeal will be launched because major donors are prioritising the crisis in Ukraine.

Civil unrest. Volatile

The Red Cross DREF document has called this a fund for civil unrest – though the grant document alludes to the unrest being a civil society protest, a wording necessitated by the Red Cross’ apolitical nature.

“A major civil society protest was organized in Colombo in front of the Presidential Secretariat, demanding the President’s resignation,” the document says, adding that “The social and economic context is highly volatile within the country.”

Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis in its 74-year post-Independence history with commodity prices sky-rocketing.

Pakistan Government Announces Inquiry Commission to Probe Imran’s Foreign Conspiracy “Drama”

OWSA Contributor

-

6 May 2022

0

Pakistan Government Announces Inquiry Commission to Probe Imran’s Foreign Conspiracy “Drama”

A series of media addresses by ministers of the Shehbaz Sharif government on Thursday reveal pincer-like moves to attack former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Thursday saw an all-out attack on Imran Khan by four ministers of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government, revealing a method to the attacks on the former Pakistan cricket captain and former prime minister.

The day began with Minister for Poverty Alleviation, Shazia Merri calling out Khan’s political agenda against the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N, ridiculing him for the small gatherings at his campaign to grab power.

Hours later, Khurram Dastigar Khan, the country’s energy minister told television reporters to say Imran Khan’s government was to blame for high inflation and a damaged economy.

He said that the PTI has left behind massive current account deficit and many power plants were closed down due to weak policies.

Then, as if on cue, senior minister and minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Murtaza Javed Abbasi called the press to describe the three-and-a-half years of Imran Khan’s government as the darkest period in the country’s history.

He said that the previous government was led by an incompetent and corrupt gang of looters that destroyed every sector of government, setting “the record highest debt” and damaging the economy.

Icing on the cake

The, late towards the evening, with an eye on the television debates, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb went full blast, announcing that government had decided to constitute an inquiry commission to probe the foreign conspiracy drama orchestrated by Imran Khan.

Marriyum told a news conference that the reason behind Khan’s campaign and his only concern was to protect his front person, Farah Gogi who indulged in corrupt practices during the “fascist, autocratic, corrupt and incompetent rule of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).”

The information minister said that the terms of reference and the names of the people on the inquiry commission would be announced after the next cabinet meeting, going hammers and tongs on how Imran Khan weaved a conspiracy against the country to save his “benami”, Farah Gogi.

She said there was plenty evidence of massive financial irregularities committed by Imran and his front persons while establishing the Al-Qadir University in the name of Riyasat-e-Medina.

“It is high time for bringing the politics of allegation and lies to an end. The inquiry report will be put before the public and those who used to hurl allegations on others will be taken to the court,” she said while announcing action against the PTI leadership involved in harming the national interest.

The minister alleged that over Rs 840 million were transferred in 44 bank accounts held by Farah Gogi, who also got prized land allotments in Punjab.

The minister referred to the country’s poor ranking by international NGO, Transparency International. Pakistan ranked 140 in the organisation’s 2021 report, she said, pointing to the corruption-marred rule of Imran with Gogi as his front person.

She termed the report an international certificate for the thieves who, she alleged, stole precious gifts from Tosha Khana and looted the national treasury.

General Strike In Sri Lanka Today Demanding President Rajapaksa to Step Down

OWSA Contributor

-

6 May 2022

0

General Strike In Sri Lanka Today Demanding President Rajapaksa to Step Down

A general strike, or hartal is underway across Sri Lanka since this morning. Shops have not opened since the morning and black flags have been put up in marketplaces in protest. In villages and smaller towns too, Sri Lankans have taken to the streets. The forms of protests vary, including cooking on streets.

A country-wide daylong general strike or hartal has been called by about 2,000 trade unions and market associations in tandem with opposition lawmakers in Sri Lanka today. The striking unions have joined the opposition to demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his government step down.

One person has been shot at by the police and roads leading to the Parliament, the President’s residence and other strategic spots have been cordoned off by the police, putting these places out of bound for the general public and the strikers.

Shops have not opened since the morning and black flags have been put up in marketplaces in protest. In villages and smaller towns too, Sri Lankans have taken to the streets. The forms of protests vary, including cooking on streets.

Today’s hartal comes with significant political connotations. It echoes a similar island-wide ‘hartal’ 69 years ago in Sri Lanka in 1953 and coincides with Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s 69 million votes in the presidential election.

Strikers say that if the President and his government do not step down, all work in the country will be suspended indefinitely beginning May 11 with the commencement of an island-wide hartal.

Services come to standstill

Almost every service sector, including shops, transport, banking, health, power and education are observing the 24-hour hartal.

Ravi Kumudesh, convenor of the union alliance and Sri Lankan representative of the international trade union IndustriAll told reporters that the strikers would also be joined by the railway union alliance, teachers and principals union as well as the Ceylon Bank Employees’ Union.

“We have decided to support the hartal tomorrow by going on a one-day strike. We have more than 18 state and private banks and also unions of the central bank with us. They have confirmed their participation and as a result all banks and their branches will be closed tomorrow,” a spokesperson for the Ceylon Bank Employees’ Union said.

The health workers joining the strike include nurses. The Sri Lankan Nurses Association and also the country’s Public Health Officers Union has announced their support for the hartal. A spokesperson for the two unions requested the general public not to come to health centres, except in case of emergencies.

Ravi Kumudesh also claimed that even fishers would not go out to sea on the day, joining the hartal.

Image: Wikimedia / AntanO

14.9 Million Excess Deaths Due To COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 and 2021: WHO Study

OWSA Staff

-

5 May 2022

0

14.9 Million Excess Deaths Due To COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 and 2021: WHO Study

The methods were developed by the Technical Advisory Group for COVID-19 Mortality Assessment and rely on a statistical model derived using information from countries with adequate data; the model is used to generate estimates for countries with little or no data available.

New estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 pandemic between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 was approximately 14.9 million (or almost 1.5 crore people).

According to WHO, the numbers of people who died due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 hover anywhere between 13.3 and 16.6 million. In short, this is almost thrice the number of deaths attributed to the disease so far.

The full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 pandemic is defined as an excess mortality, experts explain, reasoning that many deaths attributable to the pandemic were not counted as COVID-19 deaths.

Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on data from earlier years. Excess mortality includes deaths associated with COVID-19 directly (due to the disease) or indirectly (due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems and society).

“These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

Deaths linked indirectly to COVID-19 are attributable to other health conditions for which people were unable to access prevention and treatment because health systems were overburdened by the pandemic. The estimated number of excess deaths can be influenced also by deaths averted during the pandemic due to lower risks of certain events, like motor-vehicle accidents or occupational injuries, the global health body said in its statement.

Includes India

Most of the excess deaths (84 per cent) are concentrated in South-East Asia, Europe (in WHO administrative parlance, a region including India), and the Americas. Some 68 per cent of excess deaths are concentrated in just 10 countries globally.

Middle-income countries account for 81 per cent of the 14.9 million excess deaths (53 per cent in lower-middle-income countries and 28 per cent in upper-middle-income countries) over the 24-month period, with high-income and low-income countries each accounting for 15 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively.

The estimates for a 24-month period (2020 and 2021) include a breakdown of excess mortality by age and sex. They confirm that the global death toll was higher for men than for women (57 per cent male, 43 per cent female) and higher among older adults. The absolute count of the excess deaths is affected by the population size.

The number of excess deaths per 100,000 gives a more objective picture of the pandemic than reported COVID-19 mortality data.

“Death is of course an important health outcome, and measurement of excess mortality is an essential component to understand the impact of the pandemic. Shifts in mortality trends provide decision-makers information to guide policies to reduce mortality and effectively prevent future crises. Because of limited investments in data systems in many countries, the true extent of excess mortality often remains hidden,” said Dr Samira Asma, Assistant Director-General for Data, Analytics and Delivery at WHO.

“These new estimates use the best available data and have been produced using a robust methodology and a completely transparent approach.”

Based on data

The production of these estimates is a result of a global collaboration supported by the work of the Technical Advisory Group for COVID-19 Mortality Assessment and country consultations. The group, convened jointly by the WHO and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), consists of many of the world’s leading experts, who developed an innovative methodology to generate comparable mortality estimates even where data are incomplete or unavailable.

“Data is the foundation of our work every day to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. We know where the data gaps are, and we must collectively intensify our support to countries, so that every country has the capability to track outbreaks in real-time, ensure delivery of essential health services, and safeguard population health,” said Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall, Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response.

This methodology has been invaluable as many countries still lack capacity for reliable mortality surveillance and therefore do not collect and generate the data needed to calculate excess mortality. Using the publicly available methodology, countries can use their own data to generate or update their own estimates.

Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the Statistics Division of UN DESA, added: “Data deficiencies make it difficult to assess the true scope of a crisis, with serious consequences for people’s lives. The pandemic has been a stark reminder of the need for better coordination of data systems within countries and for increased international support for building better systems, including for the registration of deaths and other vital events.”

In Sri Lanka, Things Fall Apart

Inter Press Service

-

5 May 2022

0

Although the protesters are now demanding that the whole Rajapaksa family pack their bags and quit, the main target quite rightly is President Gotabaya. It was his military arrogance – having played a role in the defeat of the separatist LTTE in 2009, under the leadership of his president brother Mahinda – and his ignorance of politics and governance, and over-reliance on incompetent advisers that started the economic rot.

By Neville de Silva

When I ended last month’s column hoping that April would not prove to be hapless Sri Lanka’s ‘cruellest month’ (in the words TS Eliot), I hardly anticipated the current turn of events.

In April, the country was to celebrate several ethno-religious festivals. The biggest among them was the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, celebrated by Sri Lanka’s majority community and its main minority. It was also the Muslim month of Ramadan and Easter, commemorated by the Christians.

For over one-and-a-half years Sri Lanka had been grappling with a fast-failing economy. The dwindling of foreign reserves and the consequent shortages of food, medicines, fuel, gas and kerosene for cooking were more recently compounded by power cuts, at times as long as 12 hours per day, bringing manufacturing industries to a standstill and forcing businesses to close down early.

With the country struggling to avert bankruptcy and an unprecedented rise in inflation and spiralling commodity prices, many working-class families, daily wage earners and farmers were facing penury and starvation.

Against this dire background Sri Lanka’s 22 million people were anxiously preparing for the April festivities, wondering whether there would be anything to celebrate.

Then it happened

On March 31 the residents of Mirihana, a middle- class town on the outskirts of Colombo, held a candle-light protest to highlight the daily power cuts that disrupted their family activities. The protest, initially by women, attracted passers-by and huge crowds from neighbourhood towns and residential areas as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa lived in Mirihana in his private residence.

Swelling crowds shouting slogans later clashed with police firing tear gas and water cannons to break up the demonstration, but many of the protestors held their ground till the next day.

The Mirihana protest has sparked the island-wide conflagration that now has the once all-powerful Rajapaksa family-run government teetering on the wall like Humpty Dumpty awaiting a splintering fall. It will remain an important landmark in this uprising, which some have called, rather erroneously, Sri Lanka’s ‘Arab Spring’.

Mirihana began the assault against the Rajapaksa fiefdom that once seemed impregnable. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is president. Brother Mahinda, who served two terms as president, is currently prime minister. Another brother, Basil, a dual citizen with US citizenship and a home in Los Angeles, was until last month finance minister, and the eldest brother Chamal holds the post of irrigation minister and state minister of security. Mahinda’s eldest son Namal, whom his father sees as heir apparent, was sports and youth affairs minister, among other portfolios.

It appears that the prime minister suspects he is going to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency

Together, the family reportedly controlled 72 per cent of government resources, free to use as they deemed fit, even to farm off to their acolytes and business friends in the way of government contracts and import monopolies, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, however, that fortress of power and privilege appears as exposed as France’s Maginot Line, set to crumble against a German Blitzkrieg.

All the Rajapaksas, except Prime Minister Mahinda, lost their positions last month when President Gotabaya suddenly dissolved the cabinet in a desperate attempt to quell the mounting outrage against him. It seemed a weak moral sidestep, for the protesters’ cry was not only against the president but against the entire Rajapaksa family, which they claimed had dipped their hands into the country’s assets for personal gain.

Mirihana lit the fuse for the enormous protest that flared up at Colombo’s beach-front Galle Face Green, right opposite the Presidential Secretariat from where political power radiated. It was this that breached the Rajapaksa citadel.

Gota Go Home

At the time of writing, this protest – which shows signs of unifying the country’s multiracial, multi-religious society and has drawn crowds of all ages and a wide cross-section of the Sri Lankan community, including the professional classes – has entered its 17th continuous day, with hundreds of protesters camped there day and night despite the heat and rain.

Yet it is no Arab Spring. It is an orderly, non-violent protest, mainly of youth of all shades, with an inventive genius to keep themselves and their cause alive.

Never in Sri Lanka’s 74 years of post-independence history has the country seen anything like this, even though anti-government protests are nothing new to the country, which has seen Leftist political parties and associated trade unions functioning even under British colonial rule.

The main rallying slogan is ‘Gota Go Home’, telling Gotabaya to return to his home – also in Los Angeles – though he relinquished his US citizenship to be eligible to contest the presidential election in November 2019.

Built round that slogan are a myriad other satirical comments in song, verse, caricatures, cartoons and videos, the creative work of the protesters deriding the Rajapaksas, some demanding they return the country’s supposedly stolen assets and otherwise accumulated wealth in tax havens.

Although the protesters are now demanding that the whole Rajapaksa family pack their bags and quit, the main target quite rightly is President Gotabaya. It was his military arrogance – having played a role in the defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, under the leadership of his president brother Mahinda – and his ignorance of politics and governance, and over-reliance on incompetent advisers that started the economic rot.

Economists urged for IMF assistance

With a group of retired and serving military men appointed to key civilian positions and a coterie of so-called intellectuals and businessmen as advisers, he plunged head-first into economic policy decisions.

Within a few days of assuming office, he had slashed VAT from 15 per cent to 8per cent and abolished some other taxes that cost the state a whopping 28 per cent in revenue. It led the Central Bank to print money feverishly to meet budgetary commitments, causing inflation.

Also disastrous was the overnight decision to ban chemical fertilisers that drove farmers to burn effigies of ministers and demonstrate on the streets, demanding restitution of their fertiliser needs or face food insecurity in the months ahead, forcing a once adamant president to retract.

While economists had foreseen the impending danger in depleting foreign reserves and international debt repayments this year, and hence urged the government seek IMF assistance, the president clung steadfastly to the advice of the Central Bank Governor and the Treasury Secretary, among others, who dismissed the idea for more than one year even ignoring cabinet support for IMF help.

In a belated gesture, President Gotabaya sacked the two officials immediately after replacing his cabinet with younger, untested MPs. He sent his new finance minister to Washington to plead with the IMF for immediate relief.

Rift in the family

The president is hoping for political concessions he has agreed to – including returning to parliament and the prime minister powers that he usurped on coming to office through the 20th constitutional amendment. He has now agreed to form an interim All Party government.

But one sees a growing rift in the once close-knit family. Names proposed by Prime Minister Mahinda for the new cabinet were ignored by his brother, causing the prime minister to boycott the swearing-in of the new ministers.

If the president opts for an interim government, it means he has decided to stay put but call for the prime minister’s resignation. It would appear that the prime minister suspects he is going to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

In an interview the other day, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa insisted that he will not resign and any reconstituted government must be under his leadership. In the meantime, he has been trying to whip up support against his ouster by canvassing MPs to muster the required 113 votes.

How the protesting public will react to all these political manipulations will depend on what is on offer. Right now, they are determined to continue until President Gotabaya surrenders, which seems unlikely.

Source: Asian Affairs, London, courtesy Inter Press Service

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist.

Image: Inter Press Service

India’s Own Home-grown ONDC Looks to Break Amazon-Flipkart Duopoly in E-Commerce

Policy Circle

-

5 May 2022

0

India’s Own Home-grown ONDC Looks to Break Amazon-Flipkart Duopoly in E-Commerce

The upcoming desi e-commerce platform, ONDC, aims to bring on board 10 million merchants and 30 million sellers in 100 cities by August.

By Prachi Gupta

The Indian government is all set to launch an open network for digital commerce to take on the Indian arms of Amazon and Walmart that dominate the $73 billion domestic e-commerce market. The ONDC platform will allow buyers and sellers to transact with each other online irrespective of the applications used by them.

The platform will launch its operations in five cities initially and will later expand to 100 cities by August, bringing on board 10 million merchants and 30 million sellers. Venture capital firms and top banks have committed to pump in funds to develop the platform. And leading the effort is Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which developed Aadhar, the world’s largest biometric identification system.

India’s retail market is worth at least $1 trillion, but it is highly fragmented. E-commerce is just a small fraction of this fast-growing market. Amazon and Flipkart together have invested $24 billion to capture the market. The multinational players that together control half of India’s e-commerce trade are accused of using their duopoly position to squeeze supplier margins and of giving preferential treatment to some sellers. The e-commerce market is expected to touch $188 billion by 2025.

Challenging Amazon, Flipkart

ONDC will look to create a level playing field for millions of merchants and small retailers who are losing ground to Amazon and Flipkart. The dominant players Amazon and Flipkart are accused of using predatory pricing to put small traders out of business. The Competition Commission of India, India’s antitrust watchdog had conducted a series of raids on the premises of sellers of Amazon and Flipkart amid charges of breaches of the competition laws of the country.

The ONDC network is being developed by the commerce ministry and will support segments such as grocery, food delivery, hotel booking and air travel. The platform will back micro, small and medium enterprises as well as small traders.

The government looks to repeat the success of UPI that brought the country’s lenders on a unified platform and created a system for person-to-merchant payments. However, developing technology to bring a wide range of players from Kirana stores and FMCG manufacturers to local restaurants is a huge challenge. The quality of the network is key to weaning away consumers from world-class platforms to the ONDC platform.

Apart from Nilekani, the advisory council of ONDC has RS Sharma, Adil Zainulbhai, Anjali Bansal, Arvind Gupta, Dilip Asbe, Suresh Sethi, Praveen Khandelwal, and Kumar Rajagopalan as members.

Prachi Gupta is an Assistant Editor with Policy Circle.

This piece has been sourced from Policy Circle — policycircle.org

Business buys, collects personal information

Three times as much

More and more powerful marketing techniques

Blatant breaches of law

Industry to stop, governments to act

Pregnant women, exposed to aggressive marketing

Unethical

Parents refuse

Fake markings

A solution

Responsibility to protect

Landmark moment

Red Cross Fund

Civil unrest. Volatile

Icing on the cake

Services come to standstill

Includes India

Based on data

Then it happened

Gota Go Home

Economists urged for IMF assistance

Rift in the family

Challenging Amazon, Flipkart

Editor Picks

Climate Change

Hot Topics

About OWSA

Follow Us