Category Archives: social welfare

Promoting Human Development and Equality by Linking Neglected Tropical Disease Control with Social Protection Programs

Asia, NTDs, social welfare, , ,

 

By Anupama Tantri and Anna Johnston 

Promoting inclusive growth and curbing rising inequality are now central themes in development discussions.  Despite Asia’s impressive economic growth in the past decade, there is increasing agreement that a strong economy alone is not sufficient to address inequality. Social protection policies and programs can help translate economic growth into development and address inequalities by ensuring that the most vulnerable and marginalized communities have access to opportunities for health, education, and prosperity.

A look at Asia’s progress in achieving the MDGs offers more insight on the gap between economic growth and development, and the inequalities in health that persist across the region.  Collectively, countries in Asia have met the target of reducing extreme poverty by half; however, communities are still grappling with hunger, the other target for MDG 1.  Most countries in Asia are also lagging behind on MDG 4 and 5 aimed at reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.  Inequalities in access to food and basic health services contribute to the weak progress in achieving these targets.

Promoting human development

In 2012, World Bank President Jim Kim underscored the importance of combating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) to help reduce poverty and inequality among the world’s most marginalized communities.  Asia accounts for more than two-thirds of the world’s population at risk for lymphatic filariasis, and approximately half of the world’s children at risk for intestinal worms.

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Forms of Social Justice

london declaration, social welfare, socio-economics


By Mawish Raza, Communications Intern for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases

I have always been keen to recognizing different social justice movements. However, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are new to me. As someone who has recently joined the Global Network to advocate action against NTDs, what has struck me most is the lack of awareness and priority placed on preventing and ending the spread of these diseases.

Governments in developing nations invest a great deal of time and effort to encourage and stabilize their economies in order to increase profits. Yet halting the dispersion of NTDs is also a key component in optimizing production in industries such as agriculture and fishing. Individuals that are impacted by NTDs often live in poverty and don’t have the capacity to fight the diseases they are faced with. NTDs influence the lifestyle and attitude of not only individuals that are affected, but of their larger community – from their own family to their neighbors. Each day that a person isn’t able to go to work or make it to school is one less day that could have provided a step to profitable and personal enrichment. The impact of NTDs isn’t an issue that works in isolation; it impacts the larger community. These diseases create deeper roots for poverty to sustain in these poorly assisted communities – a poverty that not only impacts the social structure of a community, but one that digs deep into the health and mind.

The fact of the matter is that in order to bring an end to the spread of NTDs, the global community needs to address its existence.  Recognizing these diseases draws light to the fundamental influences that handicap individuals, which further impact the nation’s economy, literacy rate and development. Continue reading →

NTD Reading Breakfast.

brain food, Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, pharmaceuticals, Public Health, social welfare, socio-economics, Tropical Medicine

Greetings from End the Neglect!


Learn something new; Catch up with happenings around the world; Supplement your coffee with some of our reading suggestions below!

  1. Germany’s dedication to fighting neglected and rare diseases

Diseases that mainly affect the world’s poorest are often neglected by research in industrialized nations, as they are not particularly relevant to highly developed countries.

  1. Understanding the ins and outs of Economics towards an improved global vitality

One cost of the uproar over Greg Mortenson, and the allegations that he fictionalized his school-building story in the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea, is likely to be cynicism about whether aid makes a difference.

  1. Why are more than 1 billion people hungry in the world? Is it true?

For many in the West, poverty is almost synonymous with hunger.

  1. Local Production of Drugs can be beneficial to global health system development.

Events shaping the global pharmaceutical industry provide an unprecedented opportunity for the least developed countries (LDCs) to attract investment in the pharmaceutical sector, including from other developing countries […]

  1. China’s Three Gorges Dam has ‘urgent’ environmental problems
Environmental deterioration in the Three Gorges Dam region of China is forcing the government to acknowledge “urgent problems” which include landslides, seismic activity, relocations of citizens, and biodiversity loss.

ENJOY!

Conditional Cash Transfers – Learning as We Go

Global Development, Global Health, Latin America and the Caribbean, money, social welfare, ,

By: Richard Skolnik

The use of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) is spreading. Originating in Mexico and Brazil, CCTs are incentive payments that governments make to people to encourage them to engage in selected programs, often in health or education. The payments are “conditional” on people’s participating in those program in an agreed way. CCTs are now used in a number of countries to promote better nutrition, improved health in young children, and safer pregnancy outcomes for mothers and children, among other goals. The evidence suggests that CCTs might be a cost-effective approach to improving a number of health outcomes, especially in settings where there are important social and economic constraints to people’s accessing key health services.

As the use of CCTs expands, I look forward to seeing more research on: the ethics of paying people for making certain choices; how to sustain the behavioral impacts of CCTs; how to pay for them; and how to retain community-based approaches to behavior change when appropriate.

It will be valuable to see more explicit attention paid to ethical issues related to cash incentives for poor people to engage in certain behaviors.  To date, there does not appear to have been a systematic examination of them, either broadly or as they have played out in the CCT programs thus far. Ethicists are working with economists to address these questions and a seminar at Harvard in April on CCTs and ethics is a welcome step. Continue reading →

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