ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s urban population is likely to equal its rural population by 2030, according to a report titled ‘Life in the City: Pakistan in Focus’, released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The report was released to coincide with the launch of a UNFPA report on the global urban population, titled ‘Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth’, which says that more than half of the world’s total population will live in cities by 2008.
According to the report on Pakistan, the proportion of females is lowest in rural to urban migration and highest in rural to rural migration. The same pattern has been observed in India. In the rural-urban stream, the share of females is 51 percent in Pakistan. A relatively large fraction of rural-urban migrants crosses provincial boundaries. The perception that “the urban migrant is invariably a male” is incorrect; females make up a considerable proportion of migrants.
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2008) — In an effort to curb the rising rates of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) along the Mexico-US border, a binational team of researchers led by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that brief but personalized behavioral counseling significantly reduced rates and improved condom use among female sex workers in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The researchers observed a 40 percent decline in the combined rate of new STIs (including HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea and Chlamydia) in the group of female sex workers who received the 30-minute one-on-one counseling intervention, compared to an encounter that was based on educational information only. The study, headed by Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with researchers from across Mexico, at UC Davis and Northeastern University, will be published on line September 17 in advance of the November edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
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For the first time in history, the world’s urban population will soon exceed its rural population with about 3 billion out of 6 billion already living in urban areas.
A study has shown that over the next 25 years, over two billion people will add to the growing demand for housing, water supply, sanitation and other urban infrastructure services.
What is critical however, when considering this number is the order of magnitude.
The study details that close to 3 billion people or about 40% of the world’s population by 2030 will need to have housing and basic infrastructure services. This translates into completing 96,150 housing units per day or 4000 per hour.
“In general, governments the world over, have sought to encourage home ownership and have in many cases, provided preferential financing to influence consumer choice.The sad reality however is that today, almost one billion live in slums and squatter settlements.”
The study also shows that if urbanization proceeds apace without the necessary financing and investment for the urban poor, by 2030, it is expected that there will be two billion slum dwellers.
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NEW YORK, New York, October 6, 2008 (ENS) – By the end of this year, more than half of the world’s population will live in urban areas for the first time in human history, and it is no coincidence that climate change is now at the forefront of international debate, the top United Nations habitat official said to mark World Habitat Day.
Anna Tibaijuka serves as executive director of UN-HABITAT, the agency which promotes socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities and adequate shelter for all. “Cities consume upwards of 75 percent of all energy and contribute to an equally substantial amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Cities must therefore be an integral part of any mitigation efforts,” she said on World Habitat Day, which is observed on the first Monday in October each year.
The theme of this year’s World Habitat Day is “harmonious cities,” and the global observance this year is being led from the Angolan capital, Luanda.
The Angolan capital city of Luanda is undergoing rapid urbanization. The celebrations in Angola are intended to show the world how, after nearly three decades years of conflict, the country is progressing in the establishment of harmonious cities through improvements in urban infrastructure and services, and a new urban development strategy.
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“Government hospitals are very crowded and there is no privacy , no cleanliness. Sometimes, doctors and nurses are not available when we go there. Often , they shout at us. In corporation clinics, medicines are given for three days and we are asked not to come early even if there is a problem. Medicines are very cheap and, therefore, of inferior quality,” says slumdweller Radha. Ahmedabad: Radha is just one of the women dissatisfied with health services provided by hospitals , dispensaries, maternity homes and urban health centres run by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
In fact, a study by city-based NGO Foundation for Research in Health Systems (FRHS) in 2006-07 has found that these subsidised health and supplementary nutrition services are under-utilised by vulnerable sections of urban poor – adolescent girls, women and children.
“The survey, sponsored by a private bank, was conducted in two slums, each from East and North Zone, and one slum each from Central, West and South zone. After we made our findings known to AMC, it was supposed to intervene and correct the situation. But, that hasn’t happened so far,” says FRHS executive director Dr Alka Barua.
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Upon several warnings by the Regional Health Directorate, on the confirmed cases of cholera in the Accra metropolis, some hawkers, especially young women, still sell unhygienic foods on the streets of Accra.
It has come to the notice of the Accra File that some sellers have inculcated the habit of selling food, anywhere, especially just under traffic lights, and even from one habitat to the other.
Some of these foods include Jollof rice, plain rice, plantain and stew and waakye.
But before buying these foods, one should ask, do these sellers go through the right hygienic procedures when preparing these foods?
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The Government has identified 100% sanitation as a goal during the 11th Five Year Plan. The ultimate objective is that all urban dwellers will have access to and be able to use safe and hygienic sanitation facilities and arrangements so that no one defecates in the open.
The vision of the policy is that all Indian cities and towns become totally sanitised, healthy and liveable and ensure and sustain good public health and environmental outcomes for all their citizens with a special focus on hygienic and affordable sanitation facilities for the urban poor and women. The focus of the Policy is on Awareness Generation and Behavioural Change by generating awareness about sanitation and its linkages with public and environmental health amongst communities and institutions and also promoting mechanisms to bring about and sustain behavioural changes aimed at adoption of healthy sanitation practices.
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Fear of an epidemic now looms in Sagamu Local Government Area of Ogun State as some residents of the area have found respite at the dump site of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) where tons of contaminated frozen fish were buried last week.
Investigations by Daily Trust revealed that the dump site situated along Sagamu-Ogijo road was besieged by residents shortly after the burial of the frozen items and several cartons were returned for consumption. It was further learnt that some of the desperate residents went as far as storing the contaminated fish and started selling at rock bottom prices to unsuspecting consumers in the area. A radio programme monitored by Daily Trust in Abeokuta confirmed that the frozen fish was made available almost four times lower than the amount for the normal fish price in the market.
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DAKAR, 29 September 2008 (IRIN) – People who flee to cities because of conflicts or natural disasters tend to become invisible to the authorities and organisations that can help them, says US-based Tufts University and the Geneva-based International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
The IDMC and Tufts University researched the protection needs of displaced people in Sudan’s Khartoum, Colombia’s Santa Marta, and Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire.
Lost in the crowd
As opposed to rural displacements in which communities are more likely to move in groups, “people often arrive in individual [family] units and can become lost.many of them will not have friends or family connections, and will not know where to go,” said urban risk lecturer Dr. Mark Pelling of King’s College in London. “As a result, they can become invisible to those in power,” said Pelling.
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UN-Habitat warns of expanding slums in Nigeria
The United Nations’ agency in charge of housing, UN-Habitat, has warned that the growth rate of slums in the country, in particular, and the continent at large, poses serious threats of diseases and environmental degradation.
The UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director, UN-Habitat, Dr. Anna Tibaijuka, noted this in a document, which was obtained by our correspondent in Abuja on Friday.
She noted that the agency’s estimates showed that sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria, had the highest urban slum households in the world with figures varying between 60 and 70 per cent.
She said, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, we now know that slum dwellers are just as vulnerable as their rural counterparts to the incidence of hunger and diseases and have less education and high unemployment rates.”
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