This holiday WiRED International wishes to express our gratitude to our tireless volunteers and partners in the U.S. and abroad. Your support helps us create, distribute and deliver WiRED’s health training programs to populations with minimal health care and no other sources of health education.
An expectant mother’s health determines the health of her baby. In low-resource areas of the world, women receive too little information and scant professional attention about healthy practices during their pregnancies.
This time last year, I wrote an editorial describing the wildfires burning north of San Francisco, where many WiRED volunteers and board members live. Because of air pollution, we were holed up in our homes, able to venture outside only for chores and obligations we could not avoid. This year the fires have returned, and so has the air pollution, although the air isn’t as foul as it was last year. This year’s new disaster-related feature was the preemptive electricity outages, where power companies plunged 2.7 million people into darkness. Of course, neither the pollution nor the blackouts approach the horrors of the fires themselves and the losses to people who suffered through those infernos.
The World Health Organization (WHO) placed air pollution and climate change at the top of its list of ten threats to global health in 2019 — even ahead of such concerns as noncommunicable diseases and Ebola. Air pollution seriously affects health. There are two main types of air pollution: ambient air pollution (outdoor pollution) and household (or indoor) air pollution (pollution generated by household combustion of coal, wood or kerosene using open fires or basic stoves in poorly ventilated spaces).
Last month the WiRED–Armenia team conducted a training in Yerevan, Armenia, for members joining the program and establishing new health centers in their respective communities throughout the country.
November is National Diabetes Month — a time to learn about diabetes. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 422 million adults have diabetes, and 1.6 million deaths are directly related to diabetes every year.