Are You Ready? Here it comes.
What?
Is it time for a Good News Dump already?
Yep.
The more Good News one sticks in their noggin, the less room for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
Please remember that you can retain all that FUD, by just muting this hashtag.
According to a new report by the Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania has made significant progress against malaria, with cases dropping by 55% in the last seven years, from 7.7 million in 2015 to 3.5 million in 2022. Zanzibar has been at the forefront of the effort, reducing transmission to less than 1% in the last decade.
https://dailynews.co.tz/malaria-prevalence-drops-significantly
Successful trials of a new meningitis vaccine in Africa have raised hopes for the elimination of a disease that kills about 250,000 people a year. The NmCV-5 vaccine, which will become available in coming months, will protect against the five main meningococcal strains, including the emerging X strain, for which there is no protection.
Africa's largest polio vaccination campaign since 2020 will immunize 21 million children under five in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. The multi-country initiative will also extend to the Central African Republic, and with support from the WHO, administer vaccines in homes as well as religious centers, markets, and schools.
UNICEF just released its latest data on child malnutrition. The prevalence of stunting amongst the world's children fell from 33% in 2000 to 22.3% in 2022, and severe wasting declined from 8.7% to 6.8 %. In actual numbers, that means 56.1 million fewer children suffer from stunting than at the turn of this century.
France plans to increase its 50,000 km of bike lanes to 80,000 km by 2027, and 100,000 km by 2030. The plan includes €500 million towards helping more people purchase and maintain bikes, and additional funds to create spaces for bike parking as well as training for 850,000 school children.
US crime researcher Jeff Asher in The Atlantic: "This spring, I’ve found something that I’ve never seen before and that probably has not happened in decades: strong evidence of a sharp and broad decline in the nation’s murder rate. The United States may be experiencing one of the largest annual changes in murder ever recorded."
More on the story about improved reading levels in southern American states: Mississippi is climbing to the top of the class, despite high rates of child poverty. It’s thanks to a decade of efforts that have also lifted high school graduation rates from 75% in 2011 to 87% by 2020.
Teen birth rates have declined again in the United States, falling by 3% in 2022 to 13.5 births per 1,000 females. The rate has declined by an average of 8% every year since 2007, and by 78% overall since 1991, the most recent peak.
South Sudan has made secondary education free, following the recent lead of Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Zambia. Over the past decade, similar reforms have spread across the continent with almost half of all African countries now offering free education at the lower secondary level and almost one in three at the upper primary school level.
The Hunger Project has established communal food centers across Uganda that push past traditional 'food aid' models and empower communities to feed themselves. The 12 centers serve up to 15,000 people each, and the approach seems to be working–over the past two decades, the number of Ugandans suffering from hunger has fallen by 58%.
To commemorate Pride Month, the IPPF just did a roundup of all the progress achieved for LGBTQI+ people around the world in the last 12 months. There have been setbacks, most notably the appalling law just passed by Uganda, but 20 countries have also strengthened rights on everything from gender identity and same-sex marriage to protection from discrimination.
https://www.ippf.org/blogs/pride-2023-whats-changed-last-year
The UN says the world's health systems are showing their first major signs of post-COVID-19 recovery.
Member countries of the WHO have agreed to a 20% funding boost next year.
https://www.paho.org/en/news/22-5-2023-member-states-approve-20-increase-assessed-contributions-who
The HPV vaccine is being rolled out in countries around the world, and it's going to save millions of lives.
The amazing story behind the pregnancy bill that goes into effect in the United States at the end of this month, "one of the most significant civil rights victories our country has seen in decades."
Mexico experienced the largest decline in its murder rate in eight years last year.
Sweden is close to becoming the first smoke-free country in Europe (defined as having fewer than 5% daily smokers in the population).
Somalia says it will introduce universal suffrage–one person, one vote–by 2024.
https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20230528-somalia-to-introduce-direct-universal-suffrage-in-2024
Psychedelics are really, really, really good at curing depression.
A new study in Nature has shown that the perception of moral decline is a psychological illusion to which people throughout history have been susceptible. Our belief that people were better behaved in the old days (they weren't) is caused by a tendency to forget about the bad things that happened in the past, and by an overexposure to bad news in the present.
China has passed the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Ecosystem Protection Act, a comprehensive law protecting the Tibetan plateau and its surroundings, an area of 2.6 million km2, larger than all of Western Europe. It's a seminal moment in the story of conservation in China–not perfect, but a huge turnaround from the country's historical approach to nature.
Zimbabwe and Zambia have agreed to protect the lower Zambezi-Mana River basins as a transboundary conservation area. Spread over 18,515 km2, it's the last piece of a project that started in 2019 to conserve one million hectares of biodiversity-rich habitats and improve the living conditions of 30,000 people across Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
https://www.afrik21.africa/en/zimbabwe-zambia-an-agreement-to-conserve-the-lower-zambezi-mana-basins
Somalia has a functioning government? A democracy, no less?
I must be way behind, I thought it was ruled by a chaotic mess of warlords.
@GlytchMeister
Well, No it is NOT functional, it exists. But basically in name only.
Well at least it’s trying, I guess?
#CoSoGoodNews
An amendment to a law in Switzerland that recognizes that any sex without consent is rape has been heralded as a “historic victory for human rights.” It marks the end of the outdated definition that considered only women as victims and required the use of physical force or coercion.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/switzerland-amendment-to-rape-law-is-historic-victory-for-human-rights