Tag Archives: child

The world pledged to end child labour by 2025: So why are 138 million kids still working?

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There are 10,000 children in Madagascar who, like Tenasoa, work in the largely unregulated mica industry. The silicate is used in paints, car parts, and cosmetics – to add a “shimmer” effect. 

Alongside parents and grandparents, these children toil in dangerous conditions, inhaling harmful dust particles and entering structurally unsound tunnels. Many of them have dropped out of school – if they ever went at all. 

“If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” Soja, Tenasoa’s grandfather, said. “It’s very simple. Men, women and children must all work to survive.”

In 2015, the United Nations set a goal to end child labour worldwide by 2025 but progress has been slow and halting, according to the Child Labour Report released on Wednesday by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The report estimates that 138 million children – a 12 million decrease from 2020 – are still engaged in child labour, leading both ILO and UNICEF to call for the rapid acceleration of progress.

“The findings of our report offer hope and show that progress is possible … But we must not be blindsided by the fact that we still have a long way to go,” ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo said.

Hazardous work

Since 2000, the number of children in child labour has been reduced by over 100 million, a promising decrease which proves that the world has a “blueprint” to end child labour. Much work remains, however.

“Far too many children continue to toil in mines, factories or fields, often doing hazardous work to survive,” said Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF.

Child labour does not refer to all work done by children. Rather, it is work which deprives children of their childhood and is often dangerous to their health and development.

“It is important to understand that [child labour] is not household chores, it is not children helping their parents around the house…We are talking about work that is oftentimes hazardous,” Benajamin Smith, an ILO child labour expert told UN News.

Of the 138 million children in child labour, 54 million work in hazardous conditions, including mines.

Honorine, aged 13, is one of these children. She works from 10am to 5pm every day in a gravel quarry in Benin. Paid by the number of buckets of gravel she collects, she is saving her wages, hoping to train to be a hairdresser one day.

A young boy in Thailand takes a break while working in intense heat as a labourer.

A young boy in Thailand takes a break while working in intense heat as a labourer.

Behind the statistics

The report notes that child labour is intergenerational. Children in child labour systems often struggle to access education, something which in turn compromises their future opportunities and creates a cycle of poverty and deprivation.

Federico Blanco, ILO expert and lead author of the Child Labour Report, noted that it is important to think of child labour as not just statistical.

“Behind every number, let’s remind ourselves that there is a child whose right to education, protection and decent future is being denied,” Mr Blanco said.

Nur, a 13-year-old Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, was pulled out of school by his parents in order to help support his family financially. A case worker at a nearby UNICEF-funded centre identified Nur and convinced his family to put him back into school.

“I once dreamt of becoming a teacher. I thought I would never be able to become one. But now I feel that I can learn and become a teacher like I always wanted to,” Nur said.

‘A holistic approach’

In the report, UNICEF and ILO called for integrated policy solutions which work across governmental sectors, addressing the problem from an educational, economic and social perspective.

The report also highlighted that ending child labour cannot be accomplished without also thinking about the conditions that drive families to send their children to work – namely, poverty.

Upholding parents’ rights – including the right to collectively bargain, the right to safe work – is also key for ending child labour.

“The ILO looks at [child labour] in quite a holistic way because it is just as important [for] tackling child labour to make sure that the adults have good working conditions because poverty is really at the heart of child labour,” Mr Smith said.

Taking a country-driven approach is especially important due to regional disparities in child labour – the report noted that while all regions saw decreased numbers, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for two-thirds of child labour worldwide.

Childhood dreams – underfunded and unfulfilled

Attempts to end child labour face significant headwinds as a result of funding shortages.

“Global funding cuts threaten to roll back hard-earned gains. We must recommit to ensuring that children are in classrooms and playgrounds, not at work,” Ms. Russell said.

Adwara, aged 10, dreams of being in class. He attended school for a few years and tried to balance work and school but with eight siblings, helping support his family was non-negotiable. Eventually, his teacher told him not to return – he was missing too much school.

Now, he works in a gold mine in Ethiopia, earning approximately $35 per day: “I’d like to go to school,” he said. “I’d like to become someone.”

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World News in Brief: Women’s health in Sudan, childhood wasting, Belarus trade unions, Guatemala child rights violation

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As hostilities rage in Sudan, access constraints and devastating funding cuts are isolating rape survivors and pregnant women from essential health services, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA said on Thursday. 

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World News in Brief: Terror-crime link alarm, child detention in Australia, judiciary in Maldives, Protection of Civilians Week

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In recent years, criminal and terrorist groups have seized “every” opportunity afforded by growing instability to “entrench, expand, and escalate,” said Ghada Waly, in her opening remarks to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, in Vienna.

Challenges such as human and drug trafficking, smuggling of cultural and commercial goods, and environmental crimes are on the agenda during the four-day conference which focuses on “evolving and emerging” forms of organised crime.

Emerging threats

The world faces a “fundamental challenge to security, prosperity, and the rule of law,” the Executive Director said, with the link between criminal and terrorist groups becoming a growing concern.

While new technology serves as an enabler for criminal networks, justice systems around the world are being “starved” of the resources and conditions they need to provide equal access to justice.

She said, with criminal threats evolving, it was “certainly not the time to scale back global investment in crime prevention and criminal justice, both politically and financially,” emphasising the importance of multilateral cooperation.

Australia justice system in spotlight over child offenders’ reform

To Australia, where top independent rights experts have expressed concern at proposed legal reforms that could increase penalties for children.

In most Australian states, criminal responsibility begins at 10, allowing youngsters to be incarcerated for a wide range of crimes, if convicted.

Already, disproportionately large numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children continue to be jailed in Australia, according to rights experts Jill Edwards and Albert Barume.

The Special Rapporteurs – who are appointed by and report to the Human Rights Council – have insisted that “many new or proposed” laws across the country are incompatible with rights of the child.

Queensland crackdown

These include the so-called “Adult crime, Adult time” legal reform in the state of Queensland.

If adopted later this week, it could result in children serving longer jail time for dozens of criminal offences.

“The first goal should always be keeping children out of prison,” the rights experts said. They emphasised the excessive impact of the Queensland bill on indigenous children and the risk of creating “a future under-class of Australians”.

Aerial view of Malé, the capital of the Maldives.

Maldives’ dismissal of Supreme Court judges raises concern, UN rights office warns

The UN human rights office warned Monday that the dismissal by the Maldives authorities of two Supreme Court justices could jeopardise the independence of the judiciary.

The South Asian island nation launched probes into both judges in February 2025.

At the same time, the Maldives’ parliament adopted a bill to reduce the size of the Supreme Court bench from seven to five judges.

A third Supreme Court justice also resigned, while a fourth judge – the Chief Justice – has since retired.

The investigation against the judges raises questions about how it was conducted, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said in a statement.

Judicial independence

“We remind the authorities of their commitment to maintain and protect an independent judiciary, in line with the Maldives’ Constitution and international human rights obligations,” said OHCHR spokesperson Jeremy Laurence.

“Checks and balances between the different branches of the State, including a strong and independent judiciary, play a vital role in ensuring fidelity to the rule of law by all branches of Government and the effective protection of human rights,” Mr. Laurence added.

Previously, independent rights expert Margaret Satterthwaite expressed concern about reports that lawyers for the Maldives Supreme Court justices who were under investigation “were not given the opportunity to speak at the disciplinary proceedings and that these were not public”.

Ms. Satterthwaite reports to the Human Rights Council on the independence of judges and lawyers; she is not a UN staff member.

Protection of Civilians week will work to address ‘culture of impunity’

Over 50,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. In Sudan, the figure is around 18,000 in the past two years – and in Ukraine, the total is 12,000, since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

During Protection of Civilians Week, from 19 to 23 May, these preventable deaths and displacements will be the focus as the United Nations, its Member States and civil society affiliates gather to discuss ways of preventing future armed conflicts.

The eighth annual PoC Week – which is coordinated by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Switzerland, the Centre for Civilians in Conflict, and the International Committee of the Red Cross – will focus on the theme of “Tools to Further the Protection of Civilians.”

International guarantees, national violations

International humanitarian and human rights law establishes clear guidelines which protect civilians during armed conflicts.

However, OCHA noted that increasingly there is a “culture of impunity” surrounding the enforcement of these laws, with disregard for them spreading and the application of them increasingly politicised.

“Despite clear protections under international humanitarian and human rights law, civilians continue to suffer the brunt of conflict,” OCHA said, outlining the week ahead.

This is particularly concerning given that civilian deaths have been increasing. In the past decade, the world has experienced a surge in armed conflicts, disrupting what had previously been a 20-year decline.

Between 2022 and 2023, there was a 72 per cent increase in the number of civilian deaths according to UN estimates.

Throughout the week, individual member state missions are also hosting a variety of informal consultations. The calendar for the week is here.

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World News in Brief: Sudan aid update, child migrant deaths at sea, nursing shortages, invasive pest scourge

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Port Sudan – the main entry point for humanitarian supplies and personnel into the country – came under attack for the ninth consecutive day. As the UN’s main humanitarian hub in Sudan, drone strikes on the coastal city have gravely impacted aid delivery.

Nonetheless, UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) flights were able to resume on 8 May, providing a continuation of a key humanitarian lifeline as the war between rival militaries for control of Sudan continues, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric confirmed.

Targeting of civilian infrastructure has sparked panic and displacement. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported last week that 600 people were displaced within Port Sudan alone because of the attacks.

Catastrophic situation in North Darfur

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, warned on Sunday that the situation in the North Darfur camps of Abou Shouk “is catastrophic.”

Although the UN and its partners continue to scale up their humanitarian response, both camps remain, in effect, cut off from aid.

Ms Nkweta-Salami issued an urgent call for a ceasefire and humanitarian pauses to allow life-saving deliveries to resume.

Call for action after deaths of migrant children at sea

Two young children, aged 3 and 4, have died from dehydration aboard a rubber dinghy found adrift in the central Mediterranean, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday.

The vessel, which departed Libya carrying 62 migrants including several children, had reportedly been stranded for days after its engine failed.

Refugees and migrants in a wooden boat are rescued near the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea.

According to survivors, the children had died nearly a day before rescuers arrived.

One additional passenger is believed to have drowned earlier in the journey. Many others onboard suffered severe chemical burns caused by contact with a mixture of seawater and spilled fuel – injuries which require urgent medical attention.

All surviving passengers were eventually rescued and transferred to Lampedusa by the Italian coast guard.

‘Devastating reminder’

Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia, called the incident “another devastating reminder” of the deadly risks migrants face.

She stressed the need for coordinated search and rescue missions, and greater investment in support services for migrant families.

“The central Mediterranean remains one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world,” Ms. De Dominicis said. “Without immediate action, more lives will continue to be lost.”

UNICEF continues to call on governments to meet their obligations under international law and protect vulnerable children seeking safety.

Nursing workforce grows, but deep inequalities persist worldwide

The number of nurses around the world has increased in recent years, but a new UN report published on Monday shows that many countries and regions still face serious shortages, highlighting ongoing inequalities in access to nursing care.

Low-income countries are particularly affected, struggling with too few nurses to meet the needs of their growing populations, said the UN World Health Organization (WHO) which crunched the data.

Poor prospects at home

While these countries are training new nurses at a faster rate than wealthier nations, challenges such as rapid population growth and limited job opportunities are making it hard to close the gap, WHO added.

These imbalances in where nurses are working mean that millions still don’t have access to basic health services.

This is holding back efforts to achieve universal health coverage, protect global health, and meet international development goals linked to health.

“We cannot ignore the inequalities that mark the global nursing landscape,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

WHO is urging governments to create more nursing jobs and ensure they are fairly distributed, especially in communities where healthcare services are lacking.

Plant pests continue to threaten global food supplies

Protecting crops from pests is key to ensuring everyone has enough to eat, said the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Monday, who stressed that access to food is a basic human right.

Each year, around 40 per cent of the world’s crops are lost to plant pests and diseases, causing over $220 billion in economic damage.

Invasive pests turn up the heat

Migratory pests like locusts and armyworms are among the biggest threats, especially in regions already hit hard by conflict and climate change.

Countries in the Near East and North Africa – including Algeria, Libya and Tunisia – are currently dealing with a serious outbreak of desert locusts that began in the Sahel.

These insects destroy crops and pastureland, putting food supplies for both people and animals at risk, and threatening the survival of farming communities.

“No country can face these challenges alone,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu, at a high-level conference in Italy marking the International Day of Plant Health.

He called for greater international cooperation and more funding to tackle cross-border pests and diseases.

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Frozen embryo transfers linked with high blood pressure risks in pregnancy; What is sibling comparison?

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In vitro fertilization (IVF) using frozen embryos may be associated with a 74% higher risk of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

In comparison, the study found that pregnancies from fresh embryo transfers – transferring the fertilized egg immediately after in vitro fertilization (IVF) instead of a frozen, fertilized egg – and pregnancy from natural conception shared a similar risk of developing a hypertensive disorder.

High blood pressure during pregnancy often signals preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication including persistent high blood pressure that can endanger the health and life of the mother and fetus. Approximately 1 out of every 25 pregnancies in the United States results in preeclampsia, according to the American Heart Association.

One IVF treatment process available utilizes frozen embryos: after an egg is fertilized by sperm in the lab, it is frozen using a cryopreservation process before being thawed and transferred to the uterus at a later date. The procedure is becoming more common because of the significantly improved freezing technology or cryopreservation methods that started in the late 2000s and because more patients are choosing to freeze embryos, according to the study authors. Yet, frozen embryo transfer is known to be associated with a higher risk of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy than both natural conception and fresh embryo transfer. However, prior to this study, it was unknown whether this was due to the freezing process or a risk factor from the parents.

“Frozen embryo transfers are now increasingly common all over the world, and in the last few years, some doctors have begun skipping fresh embryo transfer to routinely freeze all embryos in their clinical practice, the so-called ‘freeze-all’ approach,” said Sindre H. Petersen, M.D., the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.

Researchers examined national data from medical birth registries from Denmark, Norway and Sweden of nearly 2.4 million women who were ages 20 to 44 years old who had single deliveries and gave birth during the study period – from 1988 through 2015. These data were the basis of a population-based study that also included a comparison of women who had both an IVF pregnancy and a naturally conceived pregnancy, called sibling comparison. This approach was used to isolate if the potential reason for the hypertensive disorders was attributable to parental factors or to the IVF treatment.

pregnant lady/Commons.wikimedia.org

The study included more than 4.5 million pregnancies, of which 4.4 million were naturally conceived; more than 78,000 pregnancies were fresh embryo transfers; and more than 18,000 pregnancies were frozen embryo transfers. Among all of the pregnancies, more than 33,000 were grouped for sibling comparison – mothers who conceived via more than one of these methods. The study is the largest to-date using sibling comparison. The odds of developing hypertensive disorders in pregnancy after fresh vs. frozen embryo transfers compared to natural conception were adjusted for variables such as birth year and the mother’s age.

“In summary, although most IVF pregnancies are healthy and uncomplicated,” Petersen said. “This analysis found that the risk of high blood pressure in pregnancy was substantially higher after frozen embryo transfer compared to pregnancies from fresh embryo transfer or natural conception.”

Specifically, the study found:

  • In the population analysis, women whose pregnancy was the result of a frozen embryo transfer were 74% more likely to develop hypertensive disorders in pregnancy compared to those who conceived naturally.
  • Among women who had both a natural conception and an frozen embryo transfer IVF conception (the sibling comparison), the risk of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy after frozen embryo transfer was twice as high compared to pregnancies from natural conception.
  • Pregnancies from fresh embryo transfer did not have a higher risk of developing hypertensive disorders compared to natural conception, neither in population level analysis nor in sibling comparisons.

“Our sibling comparisons indicate that the higher risk is not caused by factors related to the parents, rather, however, that some IVF treatment factors may be involved,” Petersen said. “Future research should investigate which parts of the frozen embryo transfer process may impact risk of hypertension during pregnancy.”

Among other findings, women in the study who gave birth after IVF pregnancies were average age 34 years for frozen embryo transfer, 33 years for fresh embryo transfer and 29 years for those who conceived naturally. About 7% of babies conceived from frozen embryo transfer were born preterm (before 40 weeks gestation) and 8% of babies after fresh embryo transfer were born preterm, compared to 5% of babies after natural conception.

In addition to preeclampsia, the researchers defined hypertensive disorders in pregnancy as a combined outcome, including gestational hypertension, eclampsia (the onset of seizures in those with preeclampsia) and chronic hypertension with superimposed preeclampsia.

One limitation of the study was the lack of data on the kind of frozen embryo cycle, so they were not able to pinpoint what part of the frozen cycle or frozen transfer may contribute to the higher risk of hypertensive disorders. Another limitation is that data from Scandinavian countries may limit generalizing the findings to people in other countries.

“Our results highlight that careful consideration of all benefits and potential risks is needed before freezing all embryos as a routine in clinical practice.  A comprehensive, individualized conversation between physicians and patients about the benefits and risks of a fresh vs. frozen embryo transfer is key,” said Petersen.

 

 

Eating behavior of parents plays key role in child’s emotional eating

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Emotional eating, or eating as a coping mechanism for negative, positive, or stress-driven emotions, is associated with unhealthy dietary patterns and weight gain. A research article featured in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, discusses adolescent vulnerability to emotional eating and how various feeding practices used by parents, such as restriction, food as reward, and child involvement, influence eating behavior.

“Emotional eating was previously found to be more learned than inherited. This study examined not only the interaction between parents when feeding their children, but also what children learned from watching their parents eat,” said lead author Joanna Klosowska, MSc, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.

Eating/Photo:en.wikipedia.org

Over the four years between 2013 −2017, covering the time from late childhood to middle adolescence, changes occurred in some parental practices. Parents reported higher monitoring and healthy modeling feeding practices, while the reported levels of food restriction and the healthy environment remained unchanged. During the same time period, adolescents reported a considerable increase in emotional eating from below the average in 2013 to above the average in 2017, according to the norms for the Dutch population. Additionally, the maladaptive way in which they regulated their emotions was also associated with emotional eating.

Dining/Photo:en.wikipedia.org

Food as a reward and monitoring food increased emotional eating especially in instances where the adolescent employed maladaptive strategies in regulating their emotions. Child involvement in meals had an opposite effect since it was associated with higher levels of emotion regulation and lower levels of emotional eating. Interestingly, a parent’s restrained eating behavior was linked to less emotional eating in adolescents.

“This study suggests that parents continue to play an important role in their child’s eating behavior into their teen years,” said Klosowska. “Additional research is needed to understand the impact restrained eating demonstrated by a parent impacts the emotional eating of a child.”

 

Exposure to air pollution in infancy alters gut microorganisms, may boost disease risk [Preventive Steps]

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Exposure to air pollution in the first six months of life impacts a child’s inner world of gut bacteria, or microbiome, in ways that could increase risk of allergies, obesity and diabetes, and even influence brain development, suggests new CU Boulder research.

“This study adds to the growing body of literature showing that air pollution exposure, even during infancy, may alter the gut microbiome, with important implications for growth and development,” said senior author Tanya Alderete, assistant professor of Integrative Physiology at CU Boulder.

At birth, an infant hosts little resident bacteria. Over the first two to three years of life, exposure to mother’s milk, solid food, antibiotics and other environmental influences shape which microorganisms take hold. Those microbes, and the metabolites, or byproducts, they produce when they break down food or chemicals in the gut, influence a host of bodily systems that shape appetite, insulin sensitivity, immunity, mood and cognition. While many are beneficial, some microbiome compositions have been associated with Chrohn’s disease, asthma, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic illnesses.

Air pollution/photo:en.wikipedia.org

“The microbiome plays a role in nearly every physiological process in the body, and the environment that develops in those first few years of life sticks with you,” said first author Maximilian Bailey, who graduated in May with a master’s in Integrative Physiology and is now a medical student at Stanford University.

Boosting inflammation

For the study, the researchers obtained fecal samples from 103 healthy, primarily breast-fed Latino infants enrolled in the Southern California Mother’s Milk Study and used genetic sequencing to analyze them.

Using their street addresses and data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality System, which records hourly data from monitoring systems, they estimated exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 (fine inhalable particles from things like factories, wildfires and construction sites) and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), a gas largely emitted from cars.

“Overall, we saw that ambient air pollution exposure was associated with a more inflammatory gut-microbial profile, which may contribute to a whole host of future adverse health outcomes,” said Alderete.

For instance, infants with the highest exposure to PM2.5 had 60% less Phascolarctobacterium, a beneficial bacterium known to decrease inflammation, support gastrointestinal health and aid in neurodevelopment. Those with the highest exposure to PM10 had 85% more of the microorganism Dialister, which is associated with inflammation.

infant-small child/photo:en.wikipedia.org

Infants are particularly vulnerable to the health hazards of air pollution because they breathe faster and their gut microbiome is just taking shape.

“This makes early life a critical window where exposure to air pollution may have disproportionately deleterious health effects,” they write.

Meantime, Alderete advises everyone to take these steps to reduce their exposure to both indoor and outdoor pollutants:

  • Avoid walking outdoors in high-traffic zones
  • Consider a low-cost air-filtration system, particularly for rooms children spend a lot of time in
  • If you are cooking, open the windows
  • And for new moms, breastfeed for as long as possible

“Breast milk is a fantastic way to develop a healthy microbiome and may help offset some of the adverse effects from environmental exposures,” Alderete said.

Is childhood obesity a psychological disorder?

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A team of researchers, including senior investigator, Bradley Peterson, MD, director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, used fMRI to investigate neural responses to food cues in overweight compared with lean adolescents. The team observed that food stimuli activated regions of the brain associated with reward and emotion in all groups. However, adolescents at an increasing risk for obesity had progressively less neural activity in circuits of the brain that support self-regulation and attention.

“This study establishes that risk for obesity isn’t driven exclusively by the absence or presence of urges to eat high-calorie foods, but also, and perhaps most importantly, by the ability to control those urges,” said Peterson, who is also a professor at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

The public health implications of childhood obesity are staggering. More than half of all adolescents in the U.S. are either overweight or obese. Children of overweight parents (2/3 of adults in the U.S.) already are or are likely to become overweight. Since excess weight has been linked to a myriad of health issues shown to limit human potential and add to the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, researchers are actively seeking novel approaches to understand better the causes of obesity and alter its trajectory. This study, recently reported in the journal NeuroImage, may offer such an approach.

“We wanted to use brain imaging to investigate a key question in obesity science: why do some people become obese, while others don’t?” said Susan Carnell, PhD, assistant professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and first author on the study.

Of the 36 adolescents (ages 14 to 19 years) enrolled in the study, 10 were overweight/obese, 16 were lean but considered at high risk for obesity because they had overweight/obese mothers and 10 were lean/low risk since they had lean mothers. The adolescents underwent brain scanning using fMRI, while they viewed words that described high-fat foods, low-fat foods and non-food items. Then they rated their appetite in response to each word stimulus. Following the activity, all participants were offered a buffet that included low- and high-calorie foods — to relate participants test responses to real-world behavior.

The investigators observed that after viewing food-related words, brain circuits that support reward and emotion were stimulated in all participants. In adolescents who were obese or who were lean but at high familial risk for obesity, they observed less activation in attention and self-regulation circuits.

Brain circuits that support attention and self-regulation showed the greatest activation in lean/low-risk adolescents, less activity in lean/high-risk participants and least activation in the overweight/obese group. Also, real world relevance mirrored fMRI findings — food intake at the buffet was greatest in the overweight/obese participants, followed by the lean/high-risk adolescents and lowest in the lean/low-risk group.

“These findings suggest that interventions designed to stimulate the self-regulatory system in adolescents may provide a new approach for treating and preventing obesity,” said Peterson.

New Born Declared Dead Comes to Life Just Before Funeral

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In a repetition of several such incidents where the patients are declared dead without proper checks, a hospital in Warangal, Telangana declared a four-day-old baby dead on Sunday but when she started moving at the cremation grounds, parents realised the faux pas but in vain.

The baby delivered at a private hospital weighed just 450 grams and was brought to MGM hospital in Warangal for neonatal intensive care unit, which has ventilator and oxygen facilities.
On Sunday morning at 11.30 am, the doctor on duty declared the baby dead and issued a death certificate too when parents decided to take the body to the cremation ground for the final rites.

When they found the baby moving, they rushed back to the same hospital where doctors again declared the baby dead, causing commotion and outrage among the relatives for their negligence in declaring the baby dead in the first instance and thus denying proper care. The parents said the doctors failed to properly check the ECG to determine the baby’s condition before declaring the baby dead.

Two weeks ago, in Delhi Safdarjung Hospital too a newborn, weighing around 460 gm was not revived after an abortion citing international norm but the baby was found alive later. Doctors who said, “It was technically an abortion because the delivery took place in the 20th week of pregnancy. Internationally, the norm says such children should not be revived,” failed to explain how they missed that the child was still breathing.

I could have buried my child if he hadn’t started kicking from inside the plastic packet,” said the father who had filed a complaint of negligence with the police.

 

Kurdi Image: UNICEF Seeks Urgent Succour to Syrian Refugees, Children

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On 26 August 2015, a distressed child rests over the shoulder of the man carrying him, in the town of Gevgelija, on the border with Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Photo: UNICEF/Tomislav Georgiev

As the “heart-breaking” image of a drowned refugee boy who washed up on a beach in Turkey ricocheted around the world on social media, along with equally painful images of children lying suffocated in the backs of trucks crossing borders and being passed over barbed wire fences by desperate parents, Anthony Lake, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today made a powerful plea for action to protect migrant and refugee children.

“It is not enough for the world to be shocked by these images. Shock must be matched by action,” declared the UNICEF chief.

In a statement issued by the agency, Mr. Lake advocated that all decisions regarding the child migrant and refugee crisis in Europe be guided by the best interests of the children involved, and that measures be taken to ensure they receive adequate health care, food, emotional support, education, shelter and protection.

UNICEF estimates that at least a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of people who have sought refuge in Europe are children, many of whom have fled the conflict in Syria.

Some 2,500 people have died or gone missing this year while attempting the crossing to Europe.

“Our hearts go out today to the families who have lost children – off the coasts, on the shores, and along the roadsides of Europe,” said Lake. “As the debates on policies proceed, we must never lose sight of the deeply human nature of this crisis. Nor of its scale,” he added.

“And we should never forget what lies behind so many of the stories of families seeking sanctuary in Europe: terrible conflicts such as that in Syria, which already has forced some 2 million children to flee their country. Only an end to these conflicts can bring an end to the misery of so many.”