Public health focuses on the systematic prevention of disease and prolonging of life by governments, NGO’s and other groups. Pulitzer Center stories tagged with “Public Health” feature reporting on communicable and non-communicable diseases, the development of medical systems and infrastructure to provide public access to health care services. Use the Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder to find and create lesson plans on public health.
We may be accustomed to thinking of AIDS as most rampant in distant parts of the world like Africa, India, and South Asia. But these days the epidemic is flaring up a bit closer to home, in the Caribbean. Indeed, AIDS is now the leading cause of death among adults there, and the Caribbean's rate of new infections is the second highest in the world, following just behind Sub-Saharan Africa.
Stigma and discrimination prevent people around the world from accessing the HIV prevention, care and treatment services they need. This is particularly true in areas of the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, where anti-sodomy laws and concerns about violence put vulnerable populations at extreme risk.
Jamaica's hard-to-reach and embattled gay community has been ignored by the government's public health program for the last 25 years. Last year, a study revealed that nearly one-third of gay men in Jamaica may be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, but the island's public health response remains paralyzed by homophobia as the epidemic continues its uncontrolled spread through Jamaican society.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region on Earth, is a place where more than 600,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth every year due to lack of proper care and only 30 percent of the population has access to health care at all. Photojournalist Marco Vernaschi is documenting the human costs, beginning with this work from Guinea Bissau.
Famines often occur during times of drought, but their causes go much deeper than a lack of rain. With East Africa now facing widespread hunger, we look back at a major food crisis that struck the Western African nation of Niger in 2005. Reporter David Hecht examines the roots of that crisis and finds some of them stretching across Niger’s border, to the neighboring country of Nigeria.
Droughts and floods can cause food crises. But so can politics and economics. Reporter David Hecht examines the roots of the 2005 food crisis in the West African nation of Niger and why so many children starved to death despite an adequate harvest.
Featured article in the Daily Tar Heel
SANTA LUCIA, HONDURAS — Deep in the mountains of southwestern Honduras, Maria Digna Ramos Mendoza spoon-feeds Plumpy'Doz, a peanut-based supplement, to her infant daughter.
Four other hungry children watch while either sitting on the dirt floor of their one-room hut or swinging from a hammock. Chickens, dogs and rats roam around the cluttered room, scavenging for their next meal.
Deep in the mountains of southwestern Honduras, Maria Digna Ramos Mendoza spoon-feeds Plumpy’Doz, a peanut-based supplement, to her infant daughter.
Four other hungry children watch while either sitting on the dirt floor of their one-room hut or swinging from a hammock. Chickens, dogs and rats roam around the cluttered room, scavenging for their next meal.
Mendoza is part of a research study being conducted by professors and students at UNC, part of the University’s larger focus on international health.
Political will is scarcer than food.
In a country plagued by chronic malnutrition, government solutions keep coming up short. The real problem: poverty and income inequality.
Poet Kwame Dawes provided the words for HOPE & Wisteria, two back-to-back performance pieces that explore different aspects of the black experience. But his contribution, vital as it is, is only one part of the puzzle. Each production is a multimedia piece using music, images and Dawes' poetry.
The musicians and singers, performing alongside Dawes on stage, contribute immensely to the power of the production, as do the photographers whose work is projected on a large screen behind the performers.
In an interview on The Root, poet Kwame Dawes discusses his role and shares his experience in creating the multimedia project "Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica," commissioned by the Pulitzer Center to document the human face of HIV in Jamaica, the country of Kwame's youth.
Learn more about the Emmy-winning LiveHopeLove.com
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