Thẻ: health

Around 300 Million People Are Homeless Worldwide, and Nearly 2.8 Billion Lack Adequate Housing

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

UN.org

Photo Credits: UN-Habitat/Julius Mwelu

04 September 2025

The world is facing an unprecedented housing crisis. According to the latest UN-Habitat estimates, 318 million people are homeless, while 2.8 billion people—over a third of the global population—lack access to adequate housing. Behind these stark figures lie deep inequalities that undermine social progress and human dignity.

Adequate housing is more than shelter, it is a foundation for stability, health, education, and opportunity. Without a safe and secure home, individuals are more vulnerable to poverty, exclusion, and poor health outcomes. Homelessness also carries a heavy social cost, eroding trust, cohesion, and the potential for societies to thrive.

The housing challenge is global but manifests differently across contexts. In rapidly urbanizing regions, millions live in informal settlements or slums, where basic services are scarce and conditions unsafe. Today, 1.1 billion people live in such informal settlements, with 90 percent concentrated in Africa and Asia. Conflict, economic inequality, climate change, and natural disasters are major drivers of displacement and housing insecurity, pushing millions into precarious living conditions.

The urgency of the crisis was underlined at the UN-Habitat Assembly in Nairobi (29–30 May 2025), where Member States adopted the UN-Habitat Strategic Plan for 2026–2029. The plan places affordable housing, secure land tenure, and access to basic services at the heart of global priorities. Leaders called for bold and coordinated action, stressing that housing must be treated as a human right and a cornerstone of sustainable development.

The right to adequate housing is embedded in international human rights instruments and explicitly tied to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Goal 11 commits the international community to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. Addressing homelessness and housing insecurity is therefore essential to achieving the SDGs and ensuring that no one is left behind.

Tackling homelessness and inadequate housing requires integrated strategies at local, national, and global levels:

  • Scaling up affordable housing initiatives through innovative financing, public-private partnerships, and policy reforms.
  • Expanding social protection systems to prevent families from falling into homelessness.
  • Investing in resilient housing solutions to adapt to the realities of climate change and disasters.
  • Strengthening community-based models such as cooperatives and housing associations that empower people to participate in shaping their own futures.

Homelessness is not inevitable. With coordinated action and commitment, the global community can reverse these trends. As the world prepares for the Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha, 4-6 November 2025, the message is clear: accelerating social progress requires that every person has access to a safe, secure, and dignified place to call home.

Remote Sensing for Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

NASA Earth Data

This ARSET training covers general approaches to apply satellite remote sensing data when studying or forecasting climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

Description

Climate-sensitive vector-borne diseases such as malaria impact millions of people each year, causing more than 700,000 deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Satellite remote sensing data can provide valuable insights for monitoring conditions which support disease vectors. In this training, participants will learn the basic principles of how satellite remote sensing data can be applied to track climate-sensitive vector-borne disease outbreaks and provide early warnings for potential outbreaks. Participants will learn about general approaches to apply satellite remote sensing data when studying or forecasting climate-sensitive infectious diseases. These will be illustrated with a case study example in the forecasting of malaria. Participants will also become familiar with some of the common, freely available NASA remote sensing datasets used in these applications, as well as where and how to access them and how to decide which datasets are fit for their purpose.

Part 1: How Remote Sensing Can be Used to Study Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases

  • Identify environmental variables and conditions that can be observed from space which are relevant to climate-sensitive infectious disease outbreaks.
  • Identify how satellite observations can improve the assessment and forecasting of climate-sensitive infectious disease outbreaks.
  • List the steps of a conceptual framework for incorporating remote sensing data into the study of climate-sensitive infectious diseases.
  • Recognize several remote sensing datasets commonly used to study and forecast climate sensitive infectious diseases, along with their key attributes such as resolution, coverage, latency, and uncertainty.
  • Select appropriate remote sensing datasets for studying climate-sensitive infectious diseases based on the disease characteristics, region of interest, and relevant environmental parameters.
  • Examine common benefits and challenges of using remote sensing data for studying climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

Host: Assaf Anyamba

Guest Instructors: Tatiana Loboda

Materials

Part 2: Case Study in the Use of Remote Sensing to Study Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases

  • Identify environmental variables and conditions relevant to malaria that can be observed from space.
  • Recognize why the remote sensing datasets used in this case study were chosen, based on their key attributes.
  • Recognize the steps taken for accessing and preparing remote sensing data for use in this case study.
  • Identify the steps used by the EPIDEMIA system for integrating remote sensing data.
  • Examine the benefits and challenges of using remote sensing data for tracking and forecasting malaria in Ethiopia, and how these were addressed through the case study.
  • Examine the primary outcomes of the case study and ways its approach might be expanded in the future.

Host: Assaf Anyamba

Guest Instructors: Michael Wimberly

Materials

How about instead of adding a pink ribbon to their products this month, companies actually remove the ingredients from their products that cause cancer.

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Pink ribbons don’t stop breast cancer. Removing cancer-causing ingredients does.

Just a friendly reminder for this year’s breast cancer awareness month.

A growing body of research shows that common agents linked to breast cancer are hiding in plain sight — in the products we use each and every day.

Some of these agents are known carcinogens, while others disrupt hormones critical to breast development and cell regulation. Together, these exposures may weaken the body’s ability to repair or destroy damaged cells, increasing cancer risk over time.

Scientists point to compounds like bisphenol A (BPA) in canned foods, PFAS in cosmetics, and flame retardants in electronics as among the many substances with ties to breast cancer. These compounds don’t just affect people through direct contact—they’re found in air, water, and even household dust, accumulating slowly but persistently in the body.

Tiếp tục đọc “How about instead of adding a pink ribbon to their products this month, companies actually remove the ingredients from their products that cause cancer.” →

Vietnam and China partner on wildlife-friendly traditional medicine practices

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này


Mongabay.com

Vietnam and China, the two largest markets for traditional medicine (TM) that uses wild plants and animals, announced a new partnership in January to adopt practices that protect wildlife while preserving the countries’ cultural heritage.

The first-of-its-kind agreement involved leading TM associations from Vietnam and China — the Vietnam Oriental Traditional Medicine Association (VOTMA) and the China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CATCM) — along with researchers, policymakers and pharmaceutical leaders. TRAFFIC, an international NGO monitoring illegal wildlife trade, facilitated it.

The partnership aims to explore “several sustainable practices to make traditional medicine more conservation-friendly,” said TRAFFIC Vietnam director Trinh Nguyen in a statement to Mongabay. She said these include encouraging practitioners to switch to legal, sustainable and cultivated plant-based alternatives, and eliminating illegal wildlife ingredients in prescriptions.

Historical TM practices in the two countries have incorporated wildlife-derived ingredients, including those from threatened species, such as tiger bones, pangolin scales, rhino horns and bear bile. While many such ingredients are legal to trade inside China, the wildlife parts are often sourced from other countries to meet domestic demand. Many of the threatened species are, however, listed on CITES Appendix I, making the international trade in their parts illegal. As TM becomes popular globally, conservationists worry about its impact on wildlife.

Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam and China partner on wildlife-friendly traditional medicine practices” →

Sex Inequalities in Medical Research: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

National Library of Medicine

Lea Merone 1,*, Komla Tsey 1, Darren Russell 1,2, Cate Nagle 1

Abstract

Background: Historically, medical studies have excluded female participants and research data have been collected from males and generalized to females. The gender gap in medical research, alongside overarching misogyny, results in real-life disadvantages for female patients. This systematic scoping review of the literature aims to determine the extent of research into the medical research sex and gender gap and to assess the extent of misogyny, if any, in modern medical research.

Methods: Initial literature searches were conducted using PubMed, Science Direct, PsychINFO and Google Scholar. Articles published between January 01, 2009, and December 31, 2019, were included. An article was deemed to display misogyny if it discussed the female aesthetic in terms of health, but did not measure health or could not be utilized to improve clinical practice.

Results: Of the 17 included articles, 12 examined the gender gap in medical research and 5 demonstrated misogyny, assessing female attractiveness for alleged medical reasons. Females remain broadly under-represented in the medical literature, sex and gender are poorly reported and inadequately analyzed in research, and misogynistic perceptions continue to permeate the narrative.

Conclusion: The gender gap and misogynistic studies remain present in the contemporary medical literature. Reasons and implications for practice are discussed.

Tiếp tục đọc “Sex Inequalities in Medical Research: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature” →

Only 0.5% of neuroscience studies look at women’s health

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

inspirethemind.org 

Neuroscience has Underserved Women. That’s Changing

A symmetrical pattern of brains are shown against a light-blue background.
Photo by DS stories on Pexels.

Neuroscientists are making strides in mapping and understanding the human brain, but like many other scientific fields, neuroscientific research has suffered from gender bias: men have been studied far more than women.

Since it came on the scene, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), where a magnetic camera looks through the skull and captures pictures of a living brain, mountains of neuroimaging studies have been made by scientists eagerly delving into the most complex organ we have. It’s led to amazing discoveries and insights, and revolutionised our understanding of how we function.

But the neuroscientific investigation into brain health in relation to conditions only affecting women, girls, and people who have or have had menstrual periods, has been comparably pitifully small.

My name’s Livia. I’m a freelance science writer and journalism student, and I found myself diving into this as I wondered why hormonal birth control, several decades after its invention, still causes negative effects on many users’ moods and well-being. Shouldn’t somebody have looked into how our brains get affected when we go on the pill — and created something better?

It turns out that this large neuroscience knowledge gap leaves billions of people in the dark about the organ that creates their lived experiences, affects drug development, and is bad for science, generally.

It’s time for neuroscience to catch up.

Tiếp tục đọc “Only 0.5% of neuroscience studies look at women’s health” →