What’s New October 2011

This page lists changes to this site for October 2011.

See below for other updates and to get notified of changes to the site.

Around 21,000 children die every day around the world.

That is equivalent to:

  • 1 child dying every 4 seconds
  • 14 children dying every minute
  • A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day
  • A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days
  • A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days
  • An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days
  • Just under 7.6 million children dying every year
  • Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010

The silent killers are poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes.

Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

This update includes updated numbers, charts and graphs. It shows that there is steady progress each year in reducing the number of children that die each year, but clearly the number is still high.

A quick look back over the decade since the 9-11 attacks finds that the neo-conservatives have achieved the opposite of what they set out to do: rather than winning a war on terror and expanding their power even further, they have over-stretched their own nation, militarily and economically. The Bush Administration preferred to concentrate on Iraq rather than Bin Laden and the trillions of dollars spent on this (directly and indirectly) has contributed to the recent economic problems the country now faces. All terribly costly given there were opportunities to get Bin Laden a lot earlier.

Media coverage and public attitudes have also shifted in the past decade, now almost reflecting partisan lines. Rights groups around the world have long voiced concerns that the war on terror is also an excuse for governments to wage a war on freedoms. Bin Laden may be dead but are the terrorists winning?

The relationship between health and poverty is reasonably well known; one can exacerbate and contribute to the other in a vicious cycle.

This update, as well as including a few health stats updates, provides further information on noncommunicable diseases (which cause some two-thirds of all deaths each year) and more details on the relationship with poverty.

Globalissues.org should now be a little bit easier to read on mobile devices.

For anyone who cares about technicalities, I have not created a separate site or URL for a mobile device; instead I’ve just used some modern techniques to adapt the layout to a few mobile-like sizes, using responsive design ideas so you do not need to bookmark a new address; just browse to www.globalissues.org as usual on a mobile device such as a mobile phone — assuming you have a suitable data package.

I only spent an hour on this, so it is by no means perfect. In addition I only had access to a limited number of mobile devices to test this with, and I imagine that it will probably be easier to read the site on so-called smart phones that have more powerful and capable web browsers built in.

To be honest, I’ve been wanting to do a full site redesign for a little while now but just haven’t managed to find the spare time for it, so the tweaks to make it easier to read on mobile devices have also been small tweaks only. Of course, many articles are also large and will probably always be difficult to read on a small device, but hopefully this is just a first step.

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