Global Issues: From Healthcare Shortages to Human Rights & Essential Medicines
Hear’s a summary of recent global developments, encompassing healthcare workforce challenges, recognition of innovation, a critical human rights update from Nigeria, and a vital step forward in access to essential medicines:
Migrant Medics & Domestic Shortages: (This topic is not covered in the provided text and therefore cannot be included, as the prompt requests preservation of verifiable facts from the source material only.)
UN Recognizes Top Innovators: (This topic is not covered in the provided text and therefore cannot be included, as the prompt requests preservation of verifiable facts from the source material only.)
Nigeria: UN report Highlights Failures in Protecting Women and girls
A new report from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) details significant shortcomings in Nigeria’s protection of women and girls, particularly regarding targeted attacks on schools and abductions. The report, published on Wednesday following a December 2023 mission to Nigeria, found a repeated failure to criminalize abduction and marital rape, and to adequately protect schoolgirls from abduction and subsequent stigmatization.
CEDAW Chair Nahla Haidar stated the failures “amount to systematic and grave violations” of women’s and girls’ rights.The delegation, the first UN body to visit the Chibok school since the 2014 mass abduction, met with government officials, security forces, and victims of abduction during their mission.
The report specifically addresses the 2014 mass abduction of 276 girls from Chibok school by Boko Haram. Of those abducted, 82 escaped, 103 were released in exchange for prisoners, and the fate of at least 91 girls remains unknown or they are still held in captivity. Ms. Haidar emphasized that the Chibok abduction was “not an isolated tragedy, but part of a series of mass abductions targeting schools and communities,” noting that “at least 1,400 students have been kidnapped from schools since the Chibok abduction.”
Sunscreen Added to WHO Essential Medicines List
independent UN experts have welcomed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision to restore sunscreen to its model lists of essential medicines. They hailed the move as “an important development in the long struggle to draw attention to, and find practical, effective and sustainable remedies for the needless deaths caused by skin cancer among persons with albinism.”
Skin cancer is the leading cause of death for people with albinism globally, a tragedy the experts stressed is preventable through increased awareness, improved access to sunscreen, and more responsive governmental action.
The experts believe the WHO’s decision has the potential to ”transform the everyday lives of persons with albinism, including life expectancy,” but cautioned that its success hinges on governments’ commitment to integrating sunscreen into national health systems and supply chains.They affirmed that ”provision of and access to sunscreen for persons with albinism is not a cosmetic exercise. It is a fundamental human right.”
furthermore, the decision aligns with States’ international obligations to prevent human rights harms linked to climate change and to protect those most vulnerable to its effects.