💉 No water for women when giving birth; No water for women in life; Kids aren't living longer either
#597 | Exercise? Not in this life; The UK says hello to meningitis; How happy is your country?
Hello, and welcome back to The Kable. Lately, it seems like every week only brings death, destruction, devastation, disaster, and more updates from Israel and the US. Let’s begin on a lighter note this week then with this Devex piece talking about how, for the second time in two weeks, the UN Women’s conference rejected the US bid to impose their own version of what constitutes gender. Pronouns must be really scary for some people.
Since we’re talking about news on the lighter side of things, here’s the latest from Earth Overshoot Day, which has been calculating, for each year since 1961, at which point in the year our demand from the planet exceeds what the planet can give us. It has been inching steadily closer to the beginning of the calendar year, with July 24 being last year’s red-letter day. This year’s data will be published, as usual, on June 5th. But till then, they have some indicative data for individual countries’ overshoot days. Not a single country makes it to December. Only five countries - Honduras, Cambodia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Tunisia - make it to even November. The earliest in the year is Qatar with an overshoot day on Feb 4. Fricking awesome.
SciDevNet has an excellent (as always) profile of The Global Dengue Observatory, which is tracking the ancient mosquito-borne killer across 88 countries around the world, pretty much in real-time. You can actually explore the data here.
India’s Strides Pharma is acquiring the branded generic products portfolio from Sandoz in a deal spanning 10 countries in the Western Sahara and Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya.
Usually in The Kable, we’ve remarked on regulatory agencies around the world finding fault with drugmaking operations in India. This week, it is the WHO dishing out the censure to Meril over QA issues at two of its manufacturing facilities.
In a departure from the norm for all things Australian came this story about an Australian man who used AI to cure his dog of cancer. Well, okay, not quite but hey this is an Australian story about something not killing something else.
The UK is treading the American path once again, axing funding to the Pandemic Fund and to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
Also, in the UK, a developing story that originally we thought of carrying in our Stories Of The Week section but what the heck. After a party at a club, several university students in Kent found themselves at the epicenter of a meningitis outbreak that is still raging in the UK, with one case even making its way across the channel to France. Suddenly, masks are back in vogue, and people are queueing up for vaccines. Pass us our tinfoil hats while we don’t tell you about impaired immune function that is not caused by repeated Covid infections because that is just a minor cold which doesn’t even exist and how impaired immune function doesn’t leave the door open for several diseases and how a large number of people do not carry meningococcal bacteria in theirs noses and throats at all times but not kept in check by the immune system, which is not in any way impaired any more. *tinfoil hat off*
In more continuing caffeine-related good news, drinking coffee every day keeps your brain young. This is a 43-year-old study but it only feels like 20. Also, do you know why sometimes your coffee tastes like mud? Because it was just ground that morning.
And that, finally, brings us to this study that says scientists don’t know how to joke, but that they should consciously practise joking more often. And no, the US health secretary is not a scientist, even if everything they say sounds like a joke.
Stories Of The Week
Water water, none for my daughter. If you’re reading this on March 20, then today is World Water Day. A new report from UN Water - UN World Water Development Report 2026 - says that, like everything else, the global water crisis too is fundamentally a gender crisis. Women are responsible for collecting water in over 70% of unserved rural households, spending a total of 250 million hours every day fetching water, time away from education, leisure, or income-generating activities. Girls under 15 are more likely than boys under 15 to fetch water, and an estimated 10 million adolescent girls across 41 countries missed school, work, or social activities between 2016 and 2022 due to lack of menstrual hygiene facilities.
Despite their central role in household water provision, agriculture, and community resilience, women remain systematically underrepresented in water governance, financing, and decision-making. In 64 utilities across 28 low- and middle-income countries, fewer than one in five water workers were women, and they were paid less than their male counterparts. In 79 of 109 responding countries, women held fewer than half of WASH positions in government jobs, with fewer than 10% in almost a quarter of countries.
Oh and, climate change makes it worse: a 1°C rise in temperature reduces incomes in female-headed households by 34% more than in male-headed households, while women’s weekly labor hours increase by an average of 55 minutes relative to men. But when water rights are often linked to land rights, and men have ownership over twice the amount of land than women in most places, you’re not no longer just dealing with a water problem. You’re dealing with a system designed to keep women in their place. And it’s not at the table.
(UN Water)
No water in life? Hah! No water at birth either. Every two seconds, a woman gives birth in a healthcare facility without clean water, decent toilets, or good hygiene. In places meant to protect life, unsafe conditions are instead driving deadly infections and indignity. A new report reveals that 76.1% of births in Africa and 64.5% of births in Asia occur in healthcare facilities without basic water, sanitation, and hygiene, meaning millions of births happen in delivery rooms where staff cannot wash their hands, wards cannot be cleaned, and women cannot safely wash themselves or their newborns. The consequences are expectedly catastrophic. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, one in nine births result in maternal sepsis, and mothers with sepsis in the region are 144 times more likely to die than those in Western Europe and North America. That’s right. 144 times. Yet the solutions are shockingly simple and ridiculously economical: in the 16 focus countries the report covered, sepsis prevention could avert 1.7 million cases and 3,800 maternal deaths every year, at a cost of just $1 per capita. But no, giving birth should be one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
(WaterAid)
Can’t save the mothers, can’t save the kids either. Under-five deaths have fallen globally by more than half since 2000, but since 2015, the pace of reduction has slowed by more than 60%. A new UN report co-authored by UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank shows that while great gains have been made globally, the overwhelming burden of under-five deaths has now shifted to Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounted for 58% of all under-five deaths in 2024, up from 38% in 2000. The report says that newborns account for nearly half of all under-five deaths, with 36% due to preterm birth complications and 21% related to labor and delivery. Infectious diseases remain major killers, with malaria the single largest killer of under-fives at 17%. Just we because we’ve wanted to use this word for a while, a juxtaposition here, infectious diseases are responsible for 54% of all under-five deaths in Africa, compared to just 9% in Europe and Northern America. Yet the report also shows what’s possible with political will. Sierra Leone declared child mortality a national emergency in 2022 and screened almost 1 million children for malnutrition, while North Macedonia cut neonatal mortality by 87% since 2015 through improved emergency obstetric care. Unfortunately, political will across Africa often clashes with financial and material and supply realities.
(UNICEF)
Bottom line
Don’t sweat it. The thing about the planet getting hotter is how it is making us less inclined towards physical activity. Personally, this editor can vouch for this phenomenon as over the years one’s body has become indistinguisable from the couch it occupies. Now, The Lancet Global Health is backing our personal experience up with science. A new study confirms rising temperatures are making physical activity undesirable and even dangerous in many parts of the world, and as global heating worsens, it will further affect how much people are able to move. Researchers analyzed data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 and found that each additional month with an average temperature above 27.8°C increases physical inactivity by an average of 1.5 percentage points globally, with an even higher increase of 1.85 points in low and middle-income countries.
Physical inactivity is already a massive public health problem, responsible for an estimated 5% of all adult deaths. About a third of the world’s population fails to meet WHO guidelines for weekly exercise, and the study projects that the increase in physical inactivity could contribute to about half a million additional premature deaths annually and $2.4bn-$3.68bn in productivity losses by 2050.
The biggest increases in inactivity are projected to be in hotter regions such as Central America, the Caribbean, eastern sub-Saharan Africa, and equatorial south-east Asia, where inactivity could rise by more than four percentage points a month. The model also predicted a bigger increase in inactivity among women, which could reflect “physiological differences as well as social factors, such as less time and access to cool places for exercise.”
(The Lancet Global Health)
Long reads
Climate change and dengue. A new study in One Earth that maps how accelerated climate change is also responsible for an acceleration in dengue cases. Because we may not like the heat but those damn mosquitoes sure do.
(One Earth)
What makes me happy? Occupation! The latest World Happiness Report is out. It doesn’t have columns for “occupied a stranger’s home” or “killed a child” because otherwise the country at #8 would be at 1, we’re sure.
(World Happiness Report)
Oh, and Gopal Nair doesn’t want you to see this.