200 pre-schoolers poisoned by school meals in China
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RNZ News
28 minutes ago
- RNZ News
'Bald-shaming' billboard sparks debate
An advertisement from an Australian company that specialises in overseas travel for medical and cosmetic procedure has sparked some debate, reading "You look better bald ...said no-one ever". There are questions over whether the ad is light hearted marketing or thinly disguised body shaming that assumes baldness is undesirable. CEO and founder of Australian company David Allen spoke to Lisa Owen. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
RNZ News
22-07-2025
- RNZ News
‘Alarming' rates of bullying, depression among Asian New Zealanders reported
Kelly Feng, chief executive of Asian Family Services, says the report points to "a silent crisis". Photo: 123RF Almost half of Asian parents say their children have been bullied at school in the past 12 months, with Indian households most affected followed by Chinese families, according to the results of a health survey unveiled on Wednesday. The New Zealand Asian Well-being and Mental Health Report also revealed that more than half of Asian adults showed signs of depression, with young adults particularly affected. Commissioned by Asian Family Services, the report is the third of its kind, with earlier iterations published in 2020 and 2021 , respectively. The report showed 46.3 percent of Asian parents believed their child had experienced bullying at school in the past 12 months. Among those who reported bullying, Indian households comprised 39.5 percent, while Chinese families made up 32.6 percent, the report said. The most common types of bullying were verbal (71.8 percent), which included name-calling, teasing, threats and racial slurs, and social (36.9 percent), which included exclusion and spreading rumours. The 2025 Asian Well-being and Mental Health Report shows Indian families are most affected by bullying. Photo: Supplied / Asian Family Services The report also highlighted physical bullying (34.6 percent) and cyberbullying (14.1 percent) such as harassment and mean messages. Primary and intermediate school students were most affected, indicating an early onset of bullying behaviour, the report said. Anxiety, social withdrawal, heightened emotional reactivity, low self-esteem, depression and self-harm were among parents' reported outcomes. The report showed just over a third of Asian parents were satisfied with their school's response to bullying. Kelly Feng, chief executive at Asian Family Services. Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin Kelly Feng, chief executive at Asian Family Services, described the results as "alarming". Feng was surprised to see a gap between Indian and Chinese families' experiences with bullying but noted it might be due to a higher rate of reporting among Indian parents. "I think [Asian] parents' confidence in responding to bullying [is] very low," Feng said. "As parents, all of them are very good at ... providing emotional support, but less confident to access professional help. "Most of the parents also have no idea where to seek support ... and [they don't] know the system or how to navigate if the school doesn't respond." People attend the inaugural Asian Mental Health and Wellbeing Summit last year. Photo: RNZ / Liu Chen Feng said many Asian parents wouldn't want to "make a big fuss about it" and would end up moving school or even cities if they failed to get support from the school. The report recommended establishing a national anti-bullying strategy with ethnic sensitivity, and funding Asian-led community navigators in schools to help parents access support. Training teachers in bullying prevention, improving accessibility to mental health services, and developing parent toolkits and peer support networks were also key recommendations in the report. More than half of the respondents - 57.2 percent - were at risk of depression, an increase from the results reported in 2021 (44.4 percent). Koreans (69.1 percent) and Indians (63.5 percent) were most affected, with Chinese individuals showing the lowest high-risk rate (16.3 percent), the report found. The risk of depression among Asian New Zealanders as shown in the 2025 Asian Well-being and Mental Health Report. Photo: Supplied / Asian Family Services Depression rates peaked among young adults aged between 18 and 29 (72 percent) and were also higher among females (60.3 percent) than males (53.9 percent). Between 2021 and 2025, the proportion of Asians with no significant depressive symptoms declined from 55.7 percent to 42.8 percent, while those at high risk rose from 14.8 percent to 20.8 percent. Discrimination remained a significant issue, with more than one in five people (22.2 percent) experiencing race-based bias, the report found. Life satisfaction among Asian communities had notably declined by 11.4 percent since 2021, particularly among younger adults and those living in urban centres, the report said. "These findings point to a silent crisis," Feng said. "Asian communities are navigating mental health challenges, discrimination and disconnection - often without adequate support. "We urgently need culturally responsive interventions in schools, workplaces and healthcare settings." The report was funded by the Ethnic Communities Development Fund, which is administered by the Ministry for Ethnic Communities. The survey was conducted online from 2-21 May, gathering responses from 1016 Asian adults nationwide. If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Scoop
22-07-2025
- Scoop
Pacific Security And Health Leaders Pledge Cooperation
A conference of Pacific security and health leaders concluded in Suva last week with the promise to "collaborate more" on a drug crisis spiralling out of control. But public health experts say that law enforcement are undermining efforts to combat the drug-driven spread of HIV in Fiji, putting the wider region at risk. This comes at a time when transmission of the disease has risen to levels only surpassed by the Philippines within the Asia-Pacific region, according to UNAIDS. National HIV Response Taskforce chair Dr Jason Mitchell believes Fiji is still far behind where they need to be in terms of detection and prevention measures. "I think a lot of times when we are trying to introduce strong public health interventions, there's opposition, oftentimes from our law enforcement agencies." Dr Mitchell told RNZ Pacific that progressive prevention measures, such as needle and syringe programmes, are often opposed at all levels of Pacific governments. "There may be legislation that they are often expected to uphold. They could also be responding to the public or political sentiments around drugs and drug users." Speaking at the recent Pacific Regional and National Security Conference 2025, held in Suva, Dr Mitchell said that the growing drug trade in the Pacific is driving the spread of HIV. "About 50 percent of people who were infected with HIV last year were as a result of intravenous drug use" UN: 'Of course' police don't help According to a new UNAIDS report, "Aids, Crisis and the Power to Transform" Fiji stands out in all the worst ways. "Since 2014, number of new HIV infections in Fiji has risen by an alarming 10-fold. UNAIDS estimates that in 2014, there were fewer than 500 people living with HIV in Fiji. Just 10 years later, that number was 5900." That rate, according to the report puts Fiji above Papua New Guinea, the previous regional leaders, to the second fastest transmission rate in the Asia-Pacific, behind only the Philippines. The report further acknowledges that given people struggle to access support services where their case would be recorded, these estimates could fall short. "In 2024, only 36 percent of people living with HIV in Fiji were aware of their HIV status, and only 24 percent were receiving treatment." When asked whether law enforcement in Fiji hinders public health efforts, UNAIDS head Renata Ram said yes. "In the Pacific, law enforcement policies can sometimes create significant barriers to effective HIV prevention, particularly for key populations such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who use drugs." "The criminalisation of these populations in many Pacific Island countries contributes to increased stigma and discrimination, driving them further away from essential health and HIV services." Ram said that colonial-era laws that continue to criminalise same-sex relations, sex work and drug possession are causing HIV-infected persons to avoid seeking help. "Punitive drug laws and the lack of protective legal environments for vulnerable populations hinder the implementation and scale-up of high-impact interventions, such as needle-syringe programmes and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)." Collaboration needed on all fronts Fiji Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu said at the conference that he and Dr Mitchell are finding time to sit down and have a chat. "It's more befitting for us to have more conference in regards to this, so that we can know what's happening in other countries, share information, look into the success stories of other countries, and how can we ourselves learn from what other countries are doing well." Tudravu said they have to fight a war on two fronts: trying to hold back the spread of drugs internally, while stopping the flow of drugs into the country from the wider Pacific. "We share information, we share resources, and we help each other... but having said that Pacific islands are limited to the resources that we have, so we need the partners that are out there, our bigger brothers, to come on board, because what we are doing in the Pacific also affects them." Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime's head of the Pacific programme Virginia Comolli told RNZ Pacific that a transnational operation, with shared resources and the help of Australia and New Zealand, would give police the space to make changes internally. "This is certainly a law enforcement issue that requires involvement of the police and customs, etc, but it also requires these security actors to cooperate closely with doctors, with public health practitioners, with mental health specialists." Comolli said she was impressed with how open and frank the police leaders were. "They are the first ones to say they cannot fight this challenge alone... who would admit that capabilities within law enforcement aren't always up to scratch." "They also highlighted how legislation needs to be to be updated in order to be on par with these emerging challenges in the introduction of new illicit substances. So I think there was lots of honesty there."
