Danielle Levy

The World Health Organization projects that there will be 19.3 million cases of cancer by 2025 as the world’s population both ages and grows. In 2012 the global toll of cancer deaths rose to 8.2 million, with breast cancer accounting for 522,000 deaths. Breast cancer is also a leading cause of cancer death in the developing world, partly because of a shift in lifestyle and partly because the clinical advances fighting the disease are not reaching women living in those countries. The most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide were lung, breast and colorectal, but the most common cause of cancer deaths were lung, liver and stomach cancers. Death rates are much higher in the developing countries, usually because disease is not diagnosed and treated early enough due to the lack of screening and access to treatment. We know there is a difference between the health care of developed countries and that of those in the developing world. We know that without proper health care, some die. And when the world’s inequities are seen in terms of life and death, that’s really pause for thought.

It is estimated that around the world 230 million children under five have not been registered—that means their birth is not recorded anywhere, they cannot obtain a birth certificate and more importantly they will not be able to have access to any number of services. UNICEF which conducted the studies said that last year only 60% of all babies born were registered. Failure to register children excludes them from education, health care and social security kind of benefits. In short it curtails their opportunities. The barriers to registration are wide ranging from parents who are unaware of the importance, to cultural barriers and fears of the misuse of personal information or of such things as reporting births out of wedlock. The ten countries with the lowest birth registration are Congo where 28 % are registered, Pakistan (27%), Guinea-Bissau (24%), Yemen (17%), Chad and Tanzania (16%), Zambia (14%), Ethiopia (7%), Liberia (4%) and Somalia (3%). Legally these children may not exist, but registered or not they are human lives with real suffering, real hunger and real needs. It may seem ironic in an era of mega data collection from several sources and several countries, but the irony underlines that registering 230 million lives ought to be achievable.

Germany with a population of about 82 million has a prison population of 66,000. That’s down from the 79,000 it recently was. As a result, there are now a lot of unused prisons which several developers have bought and turned into high end apartments or in some cases hotels or public events spaces. They are old buildings with oak doors and other features qualifying some for historical preservation despite their dilapidation. Most housed a small number of inmates which does ease the transition to other uses. In the United States where the population in January 2013 was 315,183,801, the prison population in 2012 was 1, 511, 012, a figure which was actually down 1.7% from 2011. The ratio of those incarcerated as a percentage of the population is obviously much higher. It’s 716 per 100,000. I couldn’t find the comparable number for Germany, but to place that figure in greater context, in Sweden it’s 67 per 100,000. There are efforts here and there to rethink our criminal justice system, including a couple of bills before Congress, and numbers bear out that this is overdue. Meanwhile when I read about Germany’s conversion of prisons, it couldn’t help but evoke the idea of swords into ploughshares.