Health Week in Review

This Week in Review by Robbie Lawrence, Wikichild Coordinator, is part of the Wikiprogress Health Series.

Hi everyone and welcome to another #Health related Week in Review. This week we are focusing on an array of health related topics, ranging from social progress to reports on nutrition.  Highlights include: The Social Progress Index, the IFPRRI’s Global Hunger Index, a look back at World Water Day and UNICEF’s recently released Child Nutrition report.

*This year, the Social Progress Imperative released its now annual Social Progress Index, a tool that ranks national, social and environmental progress across 50 countries representing three quarters of the world’s population. The Index will display how well countries provide for the non-economic needs of their citizens, enabling leaders in different sectors to effectively target a country’s social and environmental challenges. SPI hopes to expand the index each year so that 120 countries will eventually be included.

*As we reported last week, The Institute of Development Studies’ has issued its new Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index, a measurement of political commitment to tackling hunger and malnutrition in 45 developing countries. This tool follows on from the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index, published in January. The GHI is put together to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally by country and region and highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction. It also provides insights into the drivers of hunger in a bid to raise awareness and catalyze action.

*On Monday, UNICEF published Improving Child Nutrition: The achievable imperative for global progress which revealed that significant global progress has been made in tackling stunting – the long-term effect of hunger and malnutrition. The evidence laid out in UNICEF’s report and the momentum generated by their successes shows that improving child and maternal nutrition is an achievable necessity for global progress. If you haven’t read it already, check out our blog on the report.

*The OECD Mental Health and Work Project has launched a new series of reports focusing on how mental health and work is being tackled in a number of OECD countries including Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. According to the OECD, tackling mental health of the working age population should become a key feature of future development frameworks. .

*A recap on World Water Day, as access to clean water is so fundamental to health. The event is held around the world as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. As climate change and political and social conflicts reduce fresh water supplies, nearly 800 million people are without clean or safe water and almost 40% of the world’s population do not have access to sanitation. Next to pneumonia, diarrhea is now the biggest killer of children between one month and five years old. Follow the #igiveashit feed to find out more.

We look forward to more #health related articles next week!

The Wikiprogress Team