Perils of gender hamper global development

Suicide rates highest in US rural communities

LONDON, Sept 17, (RTRS): Despite steady development gains, a child’s birthplace is still the biggest predictor of its future health, and no matter which country you’re born in, life is harder if you’re a girl, a major report said on Tuesday.

The analysis by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a leading philanthropic funder of health and development, found that some half a billion people worldwide still don’t get basic health and education, and girls everywhere suffer disadvantage.

“Gaps between countries, districts, and boys and girls prove that the world’s investments in development aren’t reaching everyone,” said the Foundation’s Goalkeepers report, which tracks progress on reducing poverty and improving health.

It found that despite gains in girls’ educational attainment, women’s life chances are limited by social norms, discriminatory laws and policies, and gender-based violence.

In an interview on the report’s findings, Gates Foundation chief executive Sue Desmond-Hellmann said its clearest warnings were of “the perils of gender and geography”.

She cited data in the report which showed for example that more children die in Chad every day than in Finland every year, and that while Finland’s average education is up to college level, in Chad, the average child doesn’t finish primary school.

“Gender remains a massive negative on equality, so making sure we address gender inequality is the first thing,” Desmond-Hellmann told Reuters.

“But the second thing is that if you’re a girl born in (one of the poorest parts of Africa), geography is also stacked against you. It’s just not okay that a child in Chad is 55 times more likely to die than a child in Finland.”

The Goalkeepers report is compiled annually by the Gates Foundation and tracks progress on United Nations sustainable development goals which aim to reduce inequality and poverty and improve health around the world by 2030.

While it found “unabated” development progress, with life, health and prosperity improving on average across the world, it also highlighted “persistent gaps” which mean many people are being left behind.

The report called for a new approach to development to help close these gaps, targeting the poorest people in the countries and areas that need to make up the most ground.

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LOS ANGELES: Suicide rates are rising across the US, especially in rural communities and places with high poverty and a proliferation of gun shops, a new analysis suggests.

Researchers examined data on 453,577 US residents aged 25 to 65 years who died by suicide from 1999 to 2016. Large urban areas accounted for almost half of the suicides during the study period, and only about 2% of the total happened in rural counties.

Nationally, half of counties had suicide rates at or above 15 deaths per 100,000 individuals in the period from 1999 to 2001, but this figure rose to 21.2 per 100,000 in the final three-year period from 2014 to 2016.

Suicide rates tended to be higher in counties with higher levels of deprivation – a measure of how many people live in poverty and have limited education, housing insecurity, or receive public benefits. This connection between deprivation and suicide was also strongest in rural communities, especially later in the study period, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.

“This finding highlights the struggle for rural communities to adapt to changing economic conditions and difficulties bringing in new industries and opportunities,” said Danielle Steelesmith, lead author of the study and a psychiatry and behavioral health researcher at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.