HIV/AIDS is a global health crisis that impacts the lives of millions of people a year, yet still many people don’t know enough about what it is, what it does to the body, and the best ways to prevent it. That’s why we’ve answered your most googled questions about HIV and AIDS, and added a couple extra in for good measure: How many people alive today are living HIV or AIDS? Around 37 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. That’s nearly...
Thirty years ago, HIV/AIDS swept the globe largely unchecked, and a diagnosis was seen as a death sentence. Two decades later, we’ve made amazing progress – AIDS-related deaths are down by half – but the good news makes the bad news worse. This good news may be hiding a big problem. The incredible progress the world has made against AIDS has created a sense of complacency that is threatening our ability to end AIDS within our lifetime. You might not know...
If you know anything about medicine, you may of heard about pioneers such as Louis Pasteur (developed germ theory) or Alexander Fleming (discovered penicillin). But what about the women who also laid the foundations for modern medicine? Meet 8 remarkable women who pushed the frontiers of science. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 – 1762) Introduced smallpox inoculation Lady Mary Wortley Montagu defied convention by introducing smallpox inoculation into Western medicine. While visiting the Ottoman Empire, she learnt about Turkish customs and witnessed...
There are lots of barriers standing between girls and education. School fees, uniforms, food and water, and safe travel conditions all play a role in whether a girl can go to school. But there’s another crucial factor that often gets overlooked: access to period products. Women and girls living in poverty struggle to afford menstrual products. As a result, young girls often miss school during their periods. Some even resort to creating makeshift pads out of torn rags and old...
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is among the top 5 most dangerous places to be born in the world: one in every fourteen children will die before reaching the age of one. Glorie Sibamona is hoping that her newborn baby girl will beat those odds. And thanks to the innovative financing model of the Global Financing Facility (GFF), her chances are improving. The GFF was set up in 2015 to increase funding to improve maternal and child health and end...
What does your future hold? University, your own business, fame and fortune? Whatever your hopes, you will not have imagined a future in which you got married off as a child, were denied an education, or infected with HIV by a husband that’s twice your age. But this is the reality for millions of girls living in extreme poverty. And it’s time to call it out for what it is: Sexist. Nowhere on earth do girls and women have the...
This post was originally written by Emma Batha. Editing by Claire Cozens for Thomson Reuters Foundation The Zambian slum of Chibolya is notorious for crime and drugs, but acrobat Gift Chansa wants to get the township’s youth hooked on a very different high – circus. Chansa is co-founder of Circus Zambia, the country’s first social circus, which provides disadvantaged young people with education and job opportunities while teaching them everything from unicycling and fire-eating to tumbling and juggling. The circus also runs...
Written by Jamie Drummond, ONE’s Co-Founder. Firstly – apologies! Open letters like this can be self-important and irritating, but they can also be a helpful way of driving a set of specific questions upon disparate gatherings – like Davos or UNGA – with the hope of focussing debate and driving towards answers. And given the development sector’s been hit by “UNGA fever” again – here goes. A few years ago, many of us, across the public, private and non-profit sectors, worked together...