Time-related engagement of women in unpaid care work, such as cooking, cleaning and washing, has gone up to about 128% in urban areas.The information contained in a survey report,“Rapid Analysis of Care Work during Covid Pandemic in Bangladesh”, was disclosed at an online event organized by Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) on Saturday. Read rest of the news in the link below: click here

Scientists in India have identified a new Covid-19 mutation known as the “triple-mutant” in West Bengal, raising new fears about the ability of health services to cope amid the worst Covid-19 crisis the country is facing since the beginning of the pandemic, Times of India reported. The new variant, dubbed as the ‘Bengal Strain’ has also been found in samples collected from three other states including Delhi, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh. click here to see the full article.

Experience shows that innovative and evidence-based approaches, when executed well, can dent poverty. With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to reverse hard-won global gains, the need for policy-relevant research, and for scaling effective solutions, has never been more urgent. Read the article of Lindsay Coates and John Floretta in Project Syndicate: click here

Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance, warn the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) in a new report issued on March, 23, 2021. Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria top the list and face catastrophic levels of acute hunger, with families in pockets of South Sudan and Yemen already in the grip of or at risk of starvation and death according to the Hunger Hotspots report. Although the majority of the affected countries are in Africa, acute hunger is due to rise steeply in most world regions – from Afghanistan in Asia, Syria and Lebanon in the Middle East, to Haiti in Latin America and the Caribbean. Read the news link below and the Hunger Hotspots report. click here

“Despite years of warning of pandemic risk, many countries just weren’t adequately prepared for an event of this kind.” “it seemed a lot of the world sat and waited, and didn’t really use that time to put in place the measures that might have contained the outbreak rather more. And the rest is history with the wide-ranging social and economic crises which have followed with the pandemic.” Helen Clark, the Co-Chair of Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Read rest of the news in the link below: click here

The world is missing a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild a sustainable post-pandemic future, the United Nations said in an assessment showing less than 20% of recovery finance can be considered “green.” Although the unprecedented economic slowdown caused by Covid-19 saw greenhouse gas emissions fall dramatically in 2020, institutions from the UN to the International Energy Agency have warned against a fossil-fuel powered rebound. Read rest of the article in the link below: click here