Heard on the Web

It’s time to vote and decide who should win the Guardian Achievements in International Development Award. Who is your favorite candidate? My vote goes to Dr. Fred Sai. Here’s why.

Citizen media can be an important tool for people to share sexual health advice, especially considering how a lack of accurate information can lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases

To combat the spread of AIDS, to make people aware of the disease and protective measures, many organizations and activists worldwide are engaged with innovative and localized campaigns and initiatives. Today we will discuss some of them who use ICT and citizen media to augment their cause.

An epidemic has hit the Indian farmers. Increasingly farmers are resorting to extreme measures like taking their own lives to bail them out of miseries due to a complex problem consisting of poverty, crop failure and growing indebtedness. Indian bloggers analyze the situation.

Some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men.

A growing number of HIV-positive bloggers around the world are using citizen media to express how they live with the virus. Busi, a blogger and poet from South Africa found out she had HIV in April 2006, six months after she was raped.

If you look at global national data, the fact is that the world’s poorest nations do not have the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates. While true that two-thirds of the people living with HIV/AIDS are in sub-Saharan Africa – the poorest region in the world – the rates by African country do not neatly match up to the poverty index.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not even implying that the Internet can replace a relief package, neither am I suggesting that the Internet can compensate for the social and personal losses that follow poverty. I am rather suggesting, similar to Mr. Gordon Brown, that the Internet can provide a platform where we can be ourselves and have a global conversation with each other on important topics, such as poverty and AIDS.

I just stumbled upon a very interesting debate on The Economix Blog, a blog by The New York Times. In a time where global experts and scholars seem to disagree about the victims and the spoilers of the financial crisis, I find this piece very thought-provoking.

The World Bank its taking a closer look at the relationship between maternal health and economic progress.  A must-read feature:
Reducing maternal mortality by three quarters, and achieving universal access to reproductive health services is one of the Millennium Development Goals the international community set to achieve by 2015 to improve the lives of poor people. [...]