New York Times (January 15, 2014)
After three years without a case, India “can now be declared polio-free.” This “victory is an important milestone in the global effort to eliminate polio,” but much remains to be done to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of eradicating the disease by 2015, which would mean the world could be declared polio–free in 2018. Unfortunately, 2012 brought backtracking. There were 350 new cases of polio, up from 213 in 2012, and these occurred in 8 countries, up from 4.
Tags: 2012, 2015, 2018, Disease, India, Milestone, Millennium Development Goal, Polio, Polio-free, U.N., Victory
Washington Post (March 20)
“Our long economic winter is a pleasant summer in distant places.” Developed nations have battled economic insecurity over the past several years, but things have actually gotten better in much of the world. Extreme poverty “has been declining in every developing region” and, for the first time since 1981, the rate of extreme poverty is less than 50% in Africa. The UN’s first Millennium Development Goal was to halve the global rate of extreme poverty by 2015. That goal was accomplished in 2010. With these achievements in mind, things aren’t as bad as they might otherwise seem.
Tags: Africa, Developed nations, Developing nations, Extreme poverty, Millennium Development Goal, UN
