I recently traveled to Gaziantep in southern Turkey, close to the Syrian border, because I wanted to see the situation for refugee children first-hand. Turkey is carrying a huge burden, helping with what is now the biggest refugee population in the world: nearly 2.8 million Syrian refugees, of which 1.2 million are child refugees.… Read more →←
Topic: Experts speak
What’s the most important thing children have? Their brains. And yet, we’re not caring for children’s brains the way we care for their bodies. This should concern all of us – including business leaders. The first 1,000 days of life – from conception to age three – open a critical and singular window of opportunity. During… Read more →←
It has been more than 160 years since the link between sewage-polluted drinking water and cholera was first established. And yet from December 2014 to August 2016, more than 17,000 people were hospitalized due to cholera in Kenya. It is a stark reminder that inequalities persist, and that sanitation and clean drinking water are still of… Read more →←
Scaling up an innovation for maximum use and maximum benefit is never easy. The road to success is bumpy, and good ideas inevitably stumble into barriers – especially when the purpose of the innovation is to improve children’s learning experiences. But innovation that can be effective, scaled up and replicated is precisely what is… Read more →←
Antimicrobial resistance, the growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics and anti-microbial drugs, is an increasingly visible topic on the global health agenda. It poses an enormous threat to the global fight against disease, threatening to render ineffective many of the drugs we have used to fight infection since penicillin’s discovery… Read more →←
This blog post initially appeared in UNICEF’s new report on air pollution, Clear the Air for Children. It causes miscarriages, early delivery, and low birth weight. It contributes to diseases that account for almost 1 in 10 of all deaths of children under the age of five. It can harm the healthy development of children’s… Read more →←
The practice of hand washing is simple, so simple it sometimes goes unnoticed. Maybe it’s because it has rarely crosses people’s minds that our hands can serve as a reservoir for numerous microorganisms. They can be transmitted by direct contact with contaminated skin or objects, and through surfaces from contaminated environments,… Read more →←
Ahead of World Food Day, on October 16th, UNICEF has released Part II of ‘From the First Hour of Life: Making the case for improved infant and young child feeding everywhere,’ a global report mapping infant and young child feeding practices. Part I, released on 29th July, focuses on breastfeeding; part II, released on 14th October,… Read more →←
Children in the city of Aleppo are growing up in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Health workers in Aleppo are at the front lines of saving lives. The announcement of the recent reinstatement cessation of hostilities offers hope that the violence will be reduced, that children can be given a chance to live without constant… Read more →←
In the foothills of the Himalayas, many years ago, I met a small, skinny child labourer. He asked me: “Is the world so poor that it cannot give me a toy and a book, instead of forcing me to take a gun or a tool?” Another time, a child-mother from the streets of Colombia who had been trafficked, raped and enslaved, asked me this: “I… Read more →←
