United Nations (UN)

See the following -

Kaazing Unveils DisasterAWARE ENTERPRISE™ Real Time Risk Intelligence Platform For Businesses Worldwide

Press Release | Kaazing, Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) | March 22, 2018

With new records being set each year for natural disaster losses, enterprises face an ever-increasing need to be prepared. For decades, DisasterAWARE has served the needs of top agencies worldwide, including U.S. Department of Defense, Homeland Security FEMA, the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and a variety of international humanitarian aid organizations. With over 1.7 million users of DisasterAWARE mobile app, Disaster Alert for the public, spanning 115 international organizations, Kaazing is helping to broaden the reach of this critical, life-saving technology to provide businesses with an enterprise-grade solution.

Read More »

1 Month To Stop Ebola Before It's 'Totally Out Of Control' - Global Aid NGO

Staff Writer | RT | October 2, 2014

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), on behalf of 34 NGOs battling Ebola in West Africa, has warned that the number of cases is doubling roughly every three weeks and the globe has only four weeks to stop the crisis from spiraling out of control...

Read More »

5 Health Challenges The World Will Face In 2015

Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman | Vox | December 23, 2014

What comes next for the future of the world's health?... But these are the issues reason would suggest will set the world's health agenda next year...

Read More »

6 remarkable features of the new United Nations open source initiative

The United Nations wants to make technology, software, and intellectual property available to everyone, including developing countries. Open source and free software are great tools to achieve this goal since open source is all about empowering people and global collaboration while protecting the personal data and privacy of users. So, the United Nations and the open source community share the same values. This new open source strategy and policy is developed by the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL). Last month, we had our first in-person meeting in Helsinki in the UNTIL offices. I find this initiative remarkable for several reasons:

A New Tool In Humanitarian Relief: Texting

Robinson Meyer | The Atlantic | October 27, 2014

Pandemics, like war, have a higher cost than their death toll. On top of the 5,000 lives that Ebola has claimed, there are other sorts of victims in the six West African countries the virus has reached...

Read More »

Africa’s Age Of Innovation Could Make Continent A Major Economic Power

Taylor Gordon | Blerds | November 5, 2014

Over the past few days, tech experts and global authorities have urged African countries to embrace innovation and technology in order to transform the entire continent into a global, economic powerhouse. Thanks to a new wave of tech startups and government investments into these new businesses, experts believe Africa could be on the verge of an age of great innovation...

Read More »

After Ebola, Liberia’s Health System on Path to Recovery

World Bank | Relief Web | June 7, 2017

Shirley Kamara, 37, an expectant mother, smiled as she received medical care at C.H. Rennie Hospital in Kakata, just over 40 miles (68 km) north of Monrovia. “Our hospital is far better now since the Ebola outbreak,” she said. “We are encouraging our people to come here because everything is getting better.” C.H. Rennie Hospital in Liberia’s Margibi County was one of the facilities hardest-hit during the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in 2014; 14 of its health workers died...

Read More »

Are Health Workers Delivering For Women? And Are We Delivering For Health Workers?

Rebecca Kohler | CapacityPlus | June 10, 2013

In 2010, an estimated 287,000 women died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Of these deaths, 85% occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. This represents a global decline of 47% since 1990—but falls disappointingly short of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target of 75%. Read More »

As Gap Between Rich And Poor Widens, Global Safety Net In Danger

Deirdre Fulton | CommonDreams | July 25, 2014

Advances in human development risk being erased without a renewed global commitment to eradicating inequality, tackling climate change, and providing basic services, according to the UN's 2014 Human Development Report, Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Enhancing Resilience (pdf), released Thursday in Tokyo, Japan. Read More »

Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola

Robert Fortner | Huffington Post | April 30, 2017

In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...

Read More »

Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola Outbreak

Robert Fortner and Alex Park | HuffPost | May 1, 2017

In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...

Read More »

Citizen Cartographers Fill The Gaps In Maps

Hal Hodson | New Scientist | July 5, 2013

...[M]aps are a vital resource, especially when deciding what infrastructure to build or in the event of a humanitarian crisis. Now teams of mappers are working to chart some of the most obscure corners of the developing world using OpenStreetMap (OSM), the citizen-mapping tool that today has over 1 million registered users.

Read More »

Condom Airborne Meds: 6 Ways Drones Could Change Health Care

Max Blau | STAT | June 13, 2017

Drones have been used to deliver sunscreen to a conference in Palm Springs, Calif., and pizza to a family in New Zealand, but they’re also in the air for far more urgent purposes — such as saving lives. In fact, in some cases, drones could carry defibrillators to heart attack victims faster than an ambulance, according to a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers simulated emergency situations and found they could get automatic external defibrillators to the scene an average of 16 minutes faster by drone than by ambulance...

Read More »

Crowdsource Mapping Helps Recovery Efforts In Philippines

Staff Writer | Here & Now | November 15, 2013

The United Nations says 11 million people are affected by Typhoon Haiyan, which hammered the islands a week ago today. The death toll is now more than 3,000, and the survivors are still struggling to get the food and water they so desperately need. Read More »

Cuba Sending Dozens Of Doctors, Nurses To Fight Ebola In West Africa

Maria Cheng | Yahoo! News | September 12, 2014

Cuba's health ministry said Friday it is sending more than 160 health workers to help stop the raging Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, providing a much-needed injection of medical expertise in a country where health workers are in short supply...

Read More »