Health

We meet a lot of interesting things in this world every day. One of such interesting things happened on July 5th, 2011 in Sarband, Tajikistan on street Somoni 4, Apt.9. 12 year old boy Avgonov Farhod, who lives on the 3rd floor in our neighborhood, was alone at home and wanted to grab the attention of the people in the yard. He sat on the window-sill and all the neighbors looked at him. Suddenly the boy fell down.

Starting in January 2011, iEARN, PBS Newshour Extra and UNICEF partnered to support students to report on the Millennium Development Goals. Students from Turkey, Pakistan, India and U.S. successfully completed the WYN reporter certification course and reported on the state of the MDGs in their communities. Mentors from PBS NewsHour Extra and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism Graduate acted as their advisors. Here is the first report from our MDG Reporting Labs:

Obesity is a national problem not only in United States of America. People all over the world are concerned about their weight, including Tajikistan. According to 'How to Keep Our Health' by Bikbaeva Farida Ravilevna, 30% of Tajik people are overweight. Of this percentage, 25% of them are adults and 5% are children.

Adults are overweight because they have busy lives and depend on fast food, wrote Bikbaeva. Children are overweight because, "they are not active and they spend 24 hours a week watching TV,” said Eminov Naim, a local doctor.

BOSTON, U.S. -- For the past few months, students and adults at Boston Latin School have been getting locally grown vegetable samples during lunch time. This is part of a program to serve different varieties of vegetables grown by local farmers for lunch. The school's YouthCan group is pushing to get local foods into the school.

BOSTON, U.S. -- Whole Foods? In Jamaica Plain? Where is the irony there? This diverse neighborhood’s culture is not only enriched with families of Latino decent but is also home to many predominately white middle-class individuals for whom shopping at the store is a lifestyle choice no matter what the location. Whole Foods, which offers locally grown produce and other organic products, would hardly be out of character here.

Students from Boston Latin, Quincy Upper, Snowden and O'Bryant schools in Boston are reporting stories for the U.S.-Mongolia Emerging Youth Leaders Program. This program engages youth in both countries in a community journalism program exploring democracy and free expression in civil society. It is supported by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Check out their stories!

FLORIDA, USA – With medical concerns like pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases looming over their heads during abstinence-only sex education classes, teenagers across the U.S. are calling for a more comprehensive sex education policy. They say that sex education that also focuses on contraceptives, condoms and understanding one's body addresses teens questions while soothing emotional concerns that many students believe are all too often left unaddressed.

MAKATI, Philippines – Students from a high school in the Philippines have helped launch a sanitation program meant to help them stay healthy and in school.

A pilot school for new sanitation initiatives, the Makati Science High School received sanitation kits for all of its students and a refilling center. The program was funded by a group of organizations led by CityNet, a network of Asia-Pacific municipalities that manages human settlement. The group also included the Philippines division of Unilever, the soap manufacturer.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – In 1977, South Korea began researching a public health care plan, Lincoln Sampong, a historian, said. It wasn’t until 1989, after 12 years of planning, that the program was finally inaugurated. Sampong said this is exactly what needs to go into the formation of a health service.

However, the Dominican government has formulated a public health care plan in less time than that, and does not seem to have thought through all the kinks before instating it.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – Vietnam has one of the highest abortion rates in the world and 30 percent of the estimated 500,000 procedures performed there each year are performed on teenagers, according to the latest statistics from the Vietnamese Committee for Population, Family and Children. The committee also found that 28.8 percent of Vietnamese teenagers don’t know how to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases. Half of the HIV infections in Vietnam involve people under 25.

Vietnamese teenagers said their lack of knowledge about sexual behavior and reproductive health stems from a societal reticence that is similar in other developing Asian nations.