Ok it's that time again. For the new folks, every two weeks I do a Good News dump, a long thread of Good News you might or might not have heard about. If you wish to remain in doom scrolling mode, please mute this hashtag for a couple of hours. Ok. Here we go.
Hang on this is a long one.
Between 2000 and 2020, the global population with access to safely managed drinking water services has increased from 3.8 billion to 5.8 billion people. That means 90% of human beings now have access to either basic or safely managed drinking water services - the highest proportion in our species' history.
In the decade before the pandemic, 72 countries reduced poverty. One of those was Nepal, which reduced the proportion of people living in multi-dimensional poverty from 39.1% in 2010 to 17.7% in 2019. This was accompanied by the country's largest ever reduction in the proportion of people deprived of sanitation —from 60.6% in 2011 to 21.4% in 2019.
A new dengue vaccine that cuts the risk of fever by 61% and hospitalisation by 84% is on the cusp of being approved by the European Medicines Agency. Big news. Global dengue cases have almost doubled over the last three decades, and the only other vaccine we've tried wasn't safe. This new one is.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/new-vaccine-protect-people-eu-worldwide-against-dengue
And
The arrival of two vaccines for malaria portends a sea change for humanity's efforts to fight one of our greatest scourges. The first, Mosquirix, was approved by the WHO last year and will begin distribution in 2023. A more powerful vaccine with up to 80% efficacy, developed by a team at Oxford, is also just a year or two away.
Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Of course you do. Well, the FDA recently approved a new drug for Lou Gehrig's disease that was partially funded by those proceeds, and the ALS Association says the remaining funds are supporting funding 130 research projects in 12 different countries, as well as 40 potential treatments in development.
Slovenia's parliament has passed an amendment allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt after a constitutional court ruling earlier this year made it the first country in Eastern Europe to do so. "With these changes, we are recognising the rights of same-sex couples that they should have had for a long time."
Earlier this month, the US federal government took a big step in repairing the harms of the War on Drugs, by pardoning thousands of people with federal offenses for marijuana possession, and initiating a review of its classification. The move lifts a burden on the roughly 6,500 people whose employment and housing chances are harmed by their past convictions.
Japan will change an archaic 19th-century law whereby a child born to a woman within 300 days of divorce is considered to be that of her former husband, even if she has remarried. The revised legislation will also end a ban on pregnant women remarrying within 100 days of divorce.
The past quarter century has witnessed an unprecedented decline in US child poverty. In 1993, more than one in four children lived in families living below the poverty threshold. 26 years later, that number has fallen to roughly one in 10. The magnitude of this decline - 59% - is unequalled in the history of poverty reduction efforts in the United States.
https://www.childtrends.org/publications/lessons-from-a-historic-decline-in-child-poverty
Fewer teenage girls as a proportion of the global population are giving birth today than at any point in human history. Global adolescent birth rates have decreased from 64.5 births per 1,000 women at the beginning of the 21st century, to 42.5 births per 1,000 women in 2021. Every single region of the world has seen declines during this period.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-pregnancy
In September, India's Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision, giving the country's 73 million single women the right to choose. It's a human rights victory on a monumental scale - the first time a legal question about abortion in India has been approached from a women's perspective, and setting an example that could echo far beyond the sub-continent.
The Mexican state of Quintana Roo has voted to decriminalise abortion, becoming the latest state in the country to ease restrictions, and joining the 'green wave' of reproductive rights victories across Latin America.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/26/mexicos-quintana-roo-state-decriminalises-abortion
Did you know Sri Lanka has a network of more than 7,000 midwives? They're the backbone of the country's public health system, bringing health and education to every front door, vaccinating 99.1% of the country's children, and helping maintain one of the lowest maternal and child mortality rates in Asia.
Oman has become the first country in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region to successfully eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. It's thanks to investments in primary health care, a high quality network of laboratories across the country, and a new electronic health system. Next milestone? Elimination of mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B.
Pakistan has reduced malaria cases by approximately 45% since 2015, thanks to the provision of free-of-cost treatment and related facilities in the public and private health sectors, and nationwide efforts to distribute bed nets. The number of estimated cases fell from 992,605 in 2015 to 542,960 in 2020
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/pakistan-almost-halves-malaria-cases-five-years
The number of homicides in Scotland in 2021 reached their lowest point since records began in 1976. This is in line with a significant downward trend in other categories - overall crime has fallen by a total of 43% since 2007. "There are thousands fewer victims in Scotland than there were 15 years ago."
Basic income works. Pilot programs launched across the US and the rest of the world in the last few years have repeatedly shown that it pulls people out of poverty, improves health outcomes, and makes it easier for people to find jobs and take care of their children. The economic evidence is overwhelming. The political battle however, is only just beginning.
“The most astonishing and heartening coral rebirth the world has ever seen." In 2015/16, the strongest El Niño on record moved across the coral reefs of the Pacific Line Islands, killing half of them. Six years on the reefs are thriving, with more than 43 million colonies per square kilometre. Nature will recover if we let it.
The Republic of Congo will establish its first three marine reserves in the Atlantic. The reserves will cover 12% of the West African country’s ocean zone and protect breeding grounds used by humpback whales and leatherback turtles. The reserves will also cover areas inhabited by whale sharks, the world’s largest fish.
@corlin i 💜 when you share all the good news in the world :) it's very uplifting.
@corlin
Right on! That's incredible how that works.
#CoSoGoodNews
The UN is calling it a 'historic change.' Between 2005 and 2019, nearly 415 million people in India were lifted out of what is known as multidimensional poverty, a measure that includes health, education and standard of living. Children saw the fastest reduction, with child poverty falling from 34.7% to 21.8%.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/number-of-poor-people-in-india-fell-by-about-415-mn-between-2005-06-and-2019-21-a-historic-change-un/articleshow/94910830.cms