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Stillbirths: An unnecessary, unspeakable tragedy – UN report

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Stillbirths: An unnecessary, unspeakable tragedy – UN report

A Neglected Tragedy: The Global Burden of Stillbirths, released by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), reveals that 84 per cent of these grievous episodes occur in low and lower-middle income countries.

The first-ever joint global estimates also point out that stillbirths remain a challenge for high income countries, where a mother’s level of education is one of the greatest drivers of inequity, and ethnic minorities may lack access to sufficient quality health care.

“Losing a child at birth or during pregnancy is a devastating tragedy for a family, one that is often endured quietly, yet all too frequently, around the world”, lamented UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.  

A majority of stillbirths could have been prevented — UNICEF chief

COVID factor

And the report attests that the COVID-19 pandemic will likely lead a further rise. 

A pandemic-induced 50 per cent reduction in health services, could cause nearly 200,000 additional stillbirths over a 12-month period in 117 low and middle income countries, according to modeling done for the report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Muhammad Ali Pate, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank, and Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents, spelled out: “COVID-19 has triggered a devastating secondary health crisis for women, children and adolescents due to disruptions in life-saving health services”.

Poor quality of pregnancy and delivery care; a lack of antenatal and intrapartum services and weak nursing and midwifery workforces are responsible for most of these occurrences, says A Neglected Tragedy. 

“Beyond the loss of life, the psychological and financial costs for women, families and societies are severe and long lasting”, Ms. Fore affirmed, adding that “a majority of stillbirths could have been prevented with high quality monitoring, proper antenatal care and a skilled birth attendant”.

Socioeconomic link

But even before the pandemic, few women in low and middle income countries received timely, high-quality care to prevent stillbirths, the report shows – with coverage ranging from less than two per cent to a high of only 50 per cent in eight important maternal health interventions, including C-sections, malaria prevention and pregnancy hypertension management.

“Welcoming a baby into the world should be a time of great joy, but everyday thousands of parents experience unbearable sadness because their babies are still born”, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

Sound investment needed

Despite advances in health services from 2000 to 2019, the annual stillbirth reduction rate was just 2.3 per cent, compared to a 2.9 per cent reduction in neonatal mortality, and 4.3 per cent in mortality among children aged one to 59 months, according to the report.

However, the study maintains that with sound policy, programmes and investment, progress is possible.

“The tragedy of stillbirth shows how vital it is to reinforce and maintain essential health services, and how critical it is to increase investment in nurses and midwives”, the WHO chief upheld.

Because pregnant women need continued access to quality care, throughout their pregnancy and during childbirth, Dr. Pate stressed, “we are supporting countries in strengthening their health systems to prevent stillbirths and ensure that every pregnant woman can access quality health care services”.

© UNICEF/Loulou d’Aki

A woman who gave birth to a stillborn baby girl recovers in the maternity ward of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (file)

Bulgaria: MEPs call for EU values to be fully and unconditionally respected | News | European Parliament

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Bulgaria: MEPs call for EU values to be fully and unconditionally respected | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88445/

Human rights breaches in Eritrea, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia | News | European Parliament

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Human rights breaches in Eritrea, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88448/

Parliament calls on member states to fully exploit the European Youth Guarantee | News | European Parliament

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Bulgaria: MEPs call for EU values to be fully and unconditionally respected | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88443/

EU-UK relations: MEPs approve rules to ensure Eurotunnel safety and cooperation | News | European Parliament

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EU-UK relations: MEPs approve rules to ensure Eurotunnel safety and cooperation | News | European Parliament

, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201002IPR88446/

Communists Warn Citizens: ‘Christianity Does Not Belong in China’

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Communists Warn Citizens: 'Christianity Does Not Belong in China'

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues its frantic campaign to erase crosses from even Party-controlled churches, the human rights magazine Bitter Winter reported on Tuesday, explaining to Christian residents the crosses must go because “Christianity does not belong in China.”

Christianity has arguably a much older presence in much of China than it does in Western Europe and arrived there over a millennium before it did in the Americas.

Despite this, dictator Xi Jinping has launched a campaign against the faith — as well as other challenges to CCP ideology like Islam and Tibetan Buddhism — branded “Sinicization.” Party officials insist that Christianity may only exist in China when it is reconciled with Chinese culture, which it defines as the doctrine of the CCP.

Communism is an ideology founded out of the writings of European agitators. Karl Marx, its intellectual father, was born about 5,000 miles from Beijing.

The Bitter Winter report this week focused on a town in Shandong province, northeast China, where locals say CCP officials began taking down the crosses from all legal “Three-Self Patriotic” churches. The “patriotic” church is the Party-approved version of Protestantism in the country; only four other religions — Chinese Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Islam — are legal in the country. The campaign to remove the crosses in the town, identified as Dazhongcun, reportedly began in July.

“Amid the demolition, one of the town officials told onlookers that, ‘crosses must be removed from all churches because Christianity does not belong in China,’” the magazine reported.

In Linyi, a city in the province, officials reportedly began erasing public signs of Christianity in 2019, arguing that the faith was growing too popular too quickly for the Party to control.

“On April 11, the municipal United Front Work Department convened an emergency meeting for the city’s Three-Self Church pastors, informing them,” Bitter Winter reported, “that because ‘there were too many Christians in Linyi,’ the provincial government had issued a red-headed document ordering to control the matter by cracking down [on] places of worship.”

Reports of similar moves targeting the few Chinese Christians who actually use CCP-approved churches have surfaced nationwide. In some parts of the country, the churches have now become nondescript buildings. In others, the Party has adorned churches with the communist red star and other Marxist imagery.

The Three-Self Church is highly unpopular among Chinese Christians, according to aid groups helping them continue to practice their faith in the country, because all sermons, Bibles, and other materials must be first approved by the Party, meaning that most has been diluted into communist propaganda incompatible with real Christian teachings. Instead, many Christians risk their lives by attending illegal “house” church services, in which the Christians of a given neighborhood gather secretly to worship without government supervision.

Since many worship in secret, there are no reliable official statistics on the Christian population of China. Estimates suggest that China may have one of the largest Christian populations in the world. According to the Christian aid group Open Doors, China is home to over 97 million Christians. That number is 5 million larger than the official count of members of the Communist Party in the country.

Christianity is believed to have arrived in China first through missionaries related to the Assyrian Church of the East, or more commonly known as the Nestorian Church. The history of its arrival is in part written on a stone tablet known as the Nestorian Stele, or the Xi’an Stele, found in the eponymous city. According to the tablet, Christians arrived in China in 635 AD. By the turn of the millennium, however, Chinese emperors had worked to curtail its influence.

While its status as a Christian movement has caused significant controversy, the single most significant movement caused in part by Christian missionaries is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, founded in the mid-1800s by a man named Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Taiping followers attempted to secede from the Chinese empire, causing the war known as the Taiping Rebellion, which claimed about 20 million lives between 1851 and 1864.

Since Mao Zedong’s conquest of China over 70 years ago, communists have persecuted Christians and other faithful, forcing them to conform to Marxist atheism. That persecution has worsened under current dictator Xi Jinping following a period in which the “patriotic” church was allowed to appear at least nominally as a Christian organization in public. Xi has outlawed children attending church services, or any religious gathering, and targeted for closure Christian children’s camps and orphanages. Poorer Christians also face threats of losing government aid if found to be openly worshipping and reports have surfaced of Party members pressuring rural Christian to remove crosses displayed publicly and replace them with photos of Xi Jinping.

“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to rewrite the Bible itself to ‘sinicize’ the Christian doctrine,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech last month. “That’s unacceptable. That will diminish the Chinese people. We want good things for them.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Intensive farming worldwide threatens Paris climate accord, report says

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Fiona Harvey
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The spread of intensive farming is threatening to jeopardize the world’s chances of meeting the terms of the Paris agreement on the climate crisis, as the increasing use of artificial fertilizer and growing populations of livestock are raising the concentration of a key greenhouse gas to levels far beyond those seen naturally.

Nitrous oxide is given off by the overuse of artificial fertilizers, and by organic sources such as animal manure, and has a heating effect 300 times that of carbon dioxide. Levels of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are 20% higher than in pre-industrial times, with most of that increase coming from farming.

Emissions of nitrous oxide are growing at a rate of 1.4% a year, outstripping the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and left untrammeled would put the world on track to exceed the 2C warming limit set under the Paris agreement, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

Hanqin Tian, a professor at Auburn University in the US and lead author of the study, said: “The dominant driver of the increase comes from agriculture and the growing demand for food and feed for animals will further increase global nitrous oxide emissions. There is a conflict between the way we are feeding people, and stabilizing the climate.”

Current rates of nitrous oxide emissions were consistent with 3C of global heating above pre-industrial levels, the researchers found.

Artificial fertilizers make up about two-thirds of the emissions of nitrous oxide from farming. The gas is released when microbes in the soil break down the excess fertilizer, particularly in the boggy or over-wet ground where there is less oxygen.

Farmers can reduce the amount of nitrous oxide produced by simple measures such as targeting their fertilizer use more carefully, avoiding excess, and using fertilizer only in the right weather conditions.

“We have the tools to reduce this problem,” said Parvadha Suntharalingam of the University of East Anglia, the co-author of the paper. “This is not insurmountable. But these practices need to be adopted more widely. We don’t have to sacrifice production, just make sure it is managed more carefully.”

Brazil, China, and India are showing the highest growth in nitrous oxide emissions, owing to their rapid adoption of intensive livestock and grain farming, according to the Nature study. Emissions from the US have remained relatively stable, despite farm output growing.

Europe is the only region to have reduced nitrous oxide emissions, but most of these falls have come from requirements on industry, such as nylon factories. Emissions from farming have fallen more slowly, but measures to reduce the harm from fertilizers have now been adopted in some EU countries.

The gas also poses a threat to the ozone layer, which has been recovering in the last 30 years since the gases mainly responsible for its depletion – chlorofluorocarbons – were phased out under the 1987 Montreal protocol. Nitrous oxide breaks down in the stratosphere to react with ozone and is now the leading source of ozone depletion.

Nitrogen fertilizers have been a boon to farmers, as nitrogen in the soil is essential for plant growth. However, synthetic fertilisers are now cheap and are easily misused and overused, and there are few restrictions on their deployment around the world.

About a third of the nitrous oxide emissions from farming is from livestock manure. These can also be reduced by the management of slurry in large facilities and by changes to how manure is used as a fertilizer, such as injecting slurry into the soil instead of spraying it.

Nitrogen run-off from farming also harms rivers and lakes, and ammonia – from fertilizers and manure – is a leading cause of air pollution.

Although nitrous oxide is one of the six greenhouse gases covered by the 1997 Kyoto protocol, it has received less attention in recent years as the focus has been on carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Nitrous oxide is better known as laughing gas, after its experimental use by Humphry Davy at the turn of the 19th century. It has therapeutic uses but is sometimes misused. It also has some industrial uses as a propellant and is a byproduct of nylon manufacture, but can be extracted from flue gases at the factory.

EU removes Cayman Islands from Non-Cooperative countries on taxes

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Alternative Investment Management Association Welcomes The Decision Of The European Union To Remove The Cayman Islands From Its List Of Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions For Tax Purposes

AIMA welcomes the decision of the Council of the European Union to remove the Cayman Islands from the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.

The full review process carried out by the Council’s Code of Conduct Group (CoCG) since 2018  determined that, by enacting economic substance legislation in line with OECD requirements, the Cayman Islands satisfied the Council’s criteria in line with international tax standards in all respects. However, in extending the concept of economic substance to the regulation of collective investment vehicles, the CoCG required further modifications to limited regulatory measures. Although these were in the course of being implemented, the Cayman Islands were included on the EU list on 18 February 2020. The removal of the Cayman Islands from the EU list has been made at the first subsequent opportunity.

AIMA Cayman members, as part of the Cayman financial services industry, worked with the Cayman Islands government to address the requirements of the EU while protecting the interests of the Cayman Islands as a leading investment fund domicile.

The Cayman Islands fully support the work of the EU and the OECD under the BEPS Project and other initiatives to promote tax good governance. They have, for many years, participated actively in the Global Forum for Transparency and Exchange of Information, as well as international and regional task forces addressing corruption, money laundering, and terrorist financing. The Cayman Islands were among the first jurisdictions to conclude a FATCA intergovernmental agreement with the US and they operate the OECD Common Reporting Standard. The Cayman Islands maintains a registry of beneficial ownership information that is provided to the governmental agencies of participating jurisdictions on demand.

The Cayman Islands have developed their position as a leading international financial center by establishing an effective and appropriate regulatory regime, and AIMA supports the policy of the Cayman Islands to work with international bodies to address developing global initiatives.

Ronan Guilfoyle, AIMA Cayman Chairman, commented: “This action by the EU acknowledges that the regimes established by the Cayman Islands for fund regulation and the wider  economic substance requirement, as well as those for the exchange of tax and financial information, anti-money laundering and related measures are fully in line with international standards.”

Jack Inglis, AIMA CEO commented: “The Cayman Islands have been at the forefront of tax transparency in the asset management industry and the EU’s decision is a recognition of the jurisdiction meeting the most stringent conditions. This is good news for the alternatives industry, given the importance of the Cayman Islands as a fund and services center globally.”

Prof. David Baulcombe: Putting science at the service of Church and society – Vatican News

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By Fr. Benedict Mayaki, SJ

Professor David Baulcombe is one of the newest members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. As such, He hopes – in collaboration with other academicians – to learn, discuss, and help work for the benefit of people and the planet.

Brief biography

Born in Solihull, Great Britain, Professor David Baulcombe studied at the Universities of Leeds and Edinburgh, and was awarded a research doctorate. He has focused his research on gene regulation and gene expression during normal development and in disease resistance. He is the recipient of several awards including the Balzan Prize for Epigenetics (2012) and the Wolf Prize in Agriculture (2010). In 2009, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. 

Since 2017, Prof. Baulcombe has been Research Professor at the Royal Society and Professor of Botany in the Department of Plant Science at Cambridge University, UK. He is the author of numerous publications and has taught in several universities.

Field of scientific research

“I have always been interested in the ways that science influences perspectives on the natural world and the ways we can use science to improve the well-being of people,” says Prof. Baulcombe, in an interview with Vatican News.

He explains that his research over the years has been about genes, particularly how they get switched “on” and “off”. 

Clarifying further, he says that during development everything starts as one cell which “differentiates” into other types of cells. During this process, some genes are switched on, and others off. In the same way, when organisms are infected with viruses, genes in the host are switched on or off in response to the infection. 

Professor Balcombe’s contribution in this regard has been to reveal not just the major “on and off” switches, but also information about what he refers to as a “fine-tuning mechanism” of the regulation of genes at the right level and at the right time. 

“What is amazing about living things is not only that you have tens of thousands of genes that are switched on and off at the right time, but also that when they are switched on, they are switched on at the right level.”

Discovering how living things work

Giving more details about his approach, he calls himself a “reductionist wholist.” Illustrating this, he says that if we need to understand how living things work, it helps to know the component parts of the system. Therefore, since he holds that the “genes of living systems are probably their most fundamental component part,” understanding how they are regulated would lead to a better understanding of cells, organisms, and populations.

Prof. Baulcombe’s research has also led him to the discovery of a new molecule while working on “gene silencing” (regulation of gene expression in cells by switching them on or off). He explains that genes are made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and that there is a system molecule in living cells called ribonucleic acid (RNA). In his work on gene silencing, his laboratory discovered this new, smaller RNA molecule in plants.

Listen to our interview with Professor David Baulcombe

Environmental sustainability

Highlighting the applications of his research, Prof. Baulcome underscores its use in the field of agriculture: in disease and disease resistance in plants, as well as the development of agriculture which requires minimal application of pesticides. All of these, he explains, contribute to food security and environmental sustainability of agriculture.

His work on “gene silencing” also converged at the same time with the research of other people who were doing the same thing with animal cells (worms, mice and fungi).

This has thus also led to the creation of drugs and therapeutic compounds that can be applied to cure diseases in people based on the type of small RNA molecules that his research discovered.

Service to Church and society

He points out that there are many ways in which the Pontifical Academy of Sciences can help ensure that science is best used for the benefit of people.

With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, for example, he says that the Academy can help leaders of society, including the Church, to create frameworks that help identify and deal with “what we know and what we do not know” in complex systems like our societies. 

Prof. Baulcombe also notes that there are other needs in society that could be, but have not yet been, addressed by science.

This, he explains, is often “because the priorities of scientific research are shaped by market forces and profit.”

He hopes that the Academy will use its “influence and its voice” to help tackle these problems through science.

Appointment to the Pontifical Academy

Pope Francis appointed him as an ordinary member of the Academy on 26 September 2020. 

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences aims to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences. It also seeks to stimulate an interdisciplinary approach to scientific knowledge and provide authoritative advice on scientific and technological matters, among other things. It is currently holding a Plenary meeting, from 7-9 October.

Estonia and WHO to work together on digital health and innovation

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WHO in Geneva - Copyright THIX
WHO in Geneva - Copyright THIX

WHO and Estonia have agreed to collaborate on developing a digitally enhanced International Certificate of Vaccination, a “smart yellow card” to help strengthen the effectiveness of the COVAX initiative, which has been established to speed development and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

The agreement signed between His Excellency Jüri Ratas, Prime Minister of Estonia and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General on 5 October 2020, covers working together across a range of digital health projects and innovations in addition to the vaccination card. These include a global framework for health data interoperability, and guidelines for national ePrescription and eDispensing systems, as well as the European Roadmap for the Digitalization of National Health Systems.

“The World Health Organization can play a huge role in global digital health governance. Our pilot project presents an extraordinary opportunity for the Estonian community to help the world in the fight against COVID-19 and to make our experience of building digital services global,” said Prime Minister Ratas.

Also speaking at the signing ceremony, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, recognized Estonia’s leading role in digital health. “Estonia has emerged as a regional and global front runner in digital health by creating digital public services that are freely accessible by all – and that traverse education, health and welfare sectors. They are Europe’s digital success story, and have much to offer the international community, through sharing of their knowledge and expertise for the creation of digital public health goods to improve the quality of life for millions,” he commented.

Prioritizing digital health in the WHO European Region

Empowerment through digital health is 1 of 4 flagship initiatives that were endorsed by European Region Member States in September 2020 as part of the European Programme of Work 2020–2025. This initiative seeks to provide technical and policy guidance and expertise on the safety and efficacy of digital health solutions across the Region, and ensure that they are used in a way that preserves equity and human rights.

One of its key objectives is to deliver the European Roadmap for the Digitalization of National Health Systems as a blueprint for the design of digital health and social care architectures; as a baseline for orienting and measuring digital health system investment and reform; and as a catalyst for funding, research and partner engagement for digital health. The agreement signed between WHO and the Government of Estonia will contribute to this work.

Referring to the agreement signed, Dr Tedros concluded, “My thanks again to the Government of Estonia, for sharing the knowledge they gained in their efforts to develop equitable and safe digital technologies, and especially to his Excellency, Prime Minister Ratas. Our strong commitment to work together brings us further down the road towards more equitable health and well-being for all”.

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