As countries around the world are grappling with the coronavirus outbreak, Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, has managed to maintain a lower death rate. The country has so far recorded 13,656 Covid-19 positive cases with only 260 deaths since the pandemic took hold early last year. Haiti, which often struggles with infectious disease, has a Covid-19 death rate of just 22 per million, one of the lowest in the world. Read rest of the news in the link below: click here

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

The COVID-19 crisis poses an unprecedented threat to development in the Asia-Pacific region that could reverse much of the hard-earned progress made in recent years. The good news is we know how to tackle this challenge. Recovery from the pandemic and our global efforts to deliver the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 must go hand-in-hand. The Goals provide a compass to navigate this crisis, faster and greener, everywhere and for everyone. Results from the 2021 edition of the Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report published by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) show that the region fell short of its 2020 milestones for the Goals, even before entering the global pandemic. The region must accelerate progress everywhere and urgently reverse its regressing trends on many of the Goals and targets to achieve the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Read the full news and report in the link below: click here

An experimental study in 2020 discovered that the virus was inactivated when exposed to simulated sunlight for 10-20 minutes. A team of scientists is calling for further research into how sunlight inactivates SARS-CoV-2 after noticing a glaring inconsistency between the most recent theoretical and experimental results, Science Alert reports. Read the whole news below: click here

This World Health Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) is highlighting the opportunity we have to build a fairer and healthier post-Covid-19 world. For well over a year now, marginalised and disenfranchised communities across the world and in the South-East Asia Region have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic. In countries rich and poor, socioeconomic, political, educational and geographic factors, among others, have facilitated the spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus, impacting health outcomes and compounding inequalities. In our unequal world, preventable social and economic inequities continue to impede the right of everyone, everywhere, to achieve the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health—an injustice that we must not accept. Read the rest of the article of Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia. click here