Latest news with #childmortality
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
I've studied the history of death. I know how we can better face up to our grief – and our own mortality
Many years ago, as part of a school homework project, I asked my grandparents what the most significant social change had been during their lifetime. Two of them answered 'child mortality'. I was surprised. Weren't there other, more significant experiences in long lives that had stretched from the first and second world wars to the 1980s? But now that I am older and have experienced bereavement, I understand their replies. Both grandparents had sisters who died of diphtheria. And my grandfather's younger brother died of sepsis, meaning his parents had buried two of their four children before the age of three. Their childhoods had been profoundly shaped by loss. Child mortality was, at that time, horrifyingly common, and from their earliest years many people spent a great deal of their lives coping with the emotional fallout of grief, which shaped their lives into older age. I have spent the past 10 years researching the history of death, while also training as a bereavement counsellor. In my book, No Ordinary Deaths – A People's History of Mortality, I argue that we have much to learn from the past, particularly in the compassion shown to those facing the end of life, and those struggling with the emotional chasm of grief and loss. The differences between today and the past of even a few generations ago are enormous. Today, most people die in hospitals or care homes, but until well into the 20th century most died at home. Relatives or close friends usually washed and prepared the body for burial. The time between death and burial were understood as a dangerous and unstable moment for the spirit, and some communities developed elaborate wake rituals that could involve smoking, drinking, singing, games and 'trickster' antics (such as lowering a shrouded body down the chimney, as recorded once in 19th-century Wales, presumably to distract any passing demons from stealing away with the soul). Wakes could last anything from hours to days and even weeks; an issue that horrified 19th-century public health campaigners. Indeed, such practices were regularly cited as one of the main reasons why burial reform was required, demanding that funerals should happen swiftly after death, and graveyards be moved away from city centres and into the suburbs. Nowadays, dying and death are, at least in wealthy, western societies, mostly institutionally managed and medically determined. Unless we work in healthcare or emergency services, seeing a dead body is a relatively unusual experience. And we can usually pinpoint the moment of death. Without easy access to a doctor, a stethoscope (not invented until 1816) or the technology we have today to assess when heartbeat and brain function have stopped, the end of life used to be open to all kinds of interpretation. A mirror, a feather to the lips, the last rasp of agonies, a magpie landing on the roof, a black dog barking – all kinds of signs and symbols could signify the end. But until the body began to putrefy, which could take several days, the time between alive-but-near-the-end and dead was not always precise. Watching for signs of death and caring for the dying was a skilled role often undertaken by older women, who offered comfort and gathered family, friends and priest to the bedside when they assessed the moment of death was approaching. The moment of death was particularly important as it marked the beginning of activities to protect the spiritual integrity of the soul, which may include lighting candles (light around the dead was very important), cleaning and dressing the body, closing or placing coins on the eyes, and bringing aromatic herbs or personal items such as rosary beads, a favourite toy (for a child), a treasured cup or plate to be tucked in with the body. It is probable that placing such grave goods is a pre-Christian practice and may hold several meanings. Perhaps these were considered objects that would be useful in the afterlife; for some communities using things that belonged to the dead is considered to bring bad luck, so best to bury them with their original owner just in case. We might think of grief and consolatory literature such as Julia Samuel's bestselling Grief Works or Megan Devine's It's OK That You're Not OK as a modern phenomenon, but for centuries printing presses have churned out guides to dying and grieving well, offering a blend of richly illustrated earthly and spiritual administrative and emotional advice for preparing for the end and coping with loss. While we may find some of the excesses of, for instance, Victorian mourning ritual – replete with wearing heavy, dark clothing for months or even years, veiled mirrors and mourning tea sets – over the top today, the acknowledgment of grief ran deep in social structures of the past. Bereavement is for many of us the most profound experience we will have. The expectation that people should 'move on from' or 'get over' loss is to misread its potential to disorder our sense of self. In the past it was not uncommon to find 'grief' as a cause of death on mortuary rolls or death certificates. Lives spent in closer relationship to death acknowledged the ways in which it can overwhelm us. Perhaps paradoxically, our medicalised approach to end of life now has resulted in a resurgence of interest in some of the old ways of managing mortality. Death doulas seem to carry the torch of the 'death watchers' of the past, acknowledging that endings can be supported, caring, even joyful. The modern 'death positive' movement encourages, if they feel able, family and friends to be involved in washing and caring for their dead, and there is evidence that being more involved in these processes can help us in accepting death and loss and beginning to process our grief. For me, there is a more radical message as well. If we can learn to engage – without fear – with the idea of our own mortality, embracing the fact that we will die can be a liberating act. We may use it to reassess our relationship to accumulating stuff, or thinking about the kinds of personal legacy, if any, we wish to leave. And perhaps we can also learn to draw on the past, taking the best and most humane elements of how death was anticipated, the dying supported and, perhaps most crucially, grief and mourning were acknowledged. Doing this may help us to reach back into a deeper relationship with mortality, a kind of modern take on media vita in morte sumus – in the midst of life we are in death. Molly Conisbee is a social historian, visiting research fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, and author of No Ordinary Deaths
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman explains why it was 'more important than ever' to announce closure plans
The Gates Foundation, one of the biggest and most influential philanthropic organizations, announced plans to close by 2045. The foundation, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates 25 years ago, has spent $100 billion in that time, funded by the Gateses and longtime Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. It plans to spend $200 billion over the next 20 in the same realms where it has had a huge impact, including reducing childhood mortality and the spread of infectious diseases. The group initially planned to wind down decades after the deaths of its founders, but Bill Gates recently had a change of heart, as he wrote in his 'Gates Notes' blog: 'People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.' The decision was also likely shaped by the changing landscape of public health funding, most recently embodied by the closure of USAID, the federal government's arm that spent billions to fight global poverty and help those in need. Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, said in an interview that discussions to accelerate spending and the eventual closure of the organization began more than a year ago. While government cuts sharpened the urgency, they didn't spur the decision. 'This is at a moment now where there are significant cuts happening from the US, but not just the US alone, into areas that have traditionally supported our work,' Suzman said in an interview with Yahoo Finance (see video above). 'And so we felt it was more important than ever that we put a stake in the ground and say, actually, we are fully committed to this. And we think these are goals that are still achievable.' Those goals include further reducing childhood deaths from preventable causes. During the Foundation's tenure, they've fallen to 5 million from 10 million. The organization is also working to eliminate diseases like polio and Guinea-worm disease (the latter a cause championed by the late President Jimmy Carter). Suzman acknowledged that even for a large philanthropic group like his, spending is dwarfed by the amount of government assistance. The Gates Foundation's annual budget is about $9 billion. That compares with total US foreign aid of nearly $72 billion in fiscal 2023, $40 billion of which was allocated to USAID. The difference, Suzman said, is that philanthropies are able to take risks and fund innovation. He cited the Gates Foundation's work funding successful vaccine development. As for artificial intelligence, 'We think it's going to be an amazing force multiplier, but it requires an intentionality of trying to get the use cases that are going to help serve the poorest because naturally the market will go to the wealthy,' Suzman said. The elimination of USAID, helped by Elon Musk's 'DOGE' cost-cutting agency, rekindled animosity between Musk and Bill Gates. In an interview with the New York Times, Gates said, 'The world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children.' Suzman was more diplomatic and said there does need to be a focus on efficiency in aid programs. That said, he added: 'If you could go to a US taxpayer and say, 'We can show you how a single dollar of your taxpayer dollars is going and literally saving a mother's life in childbirth and allowing that kid to survive and not just survive but thrive. Do you think that's a worthwhile use of your tax dollars?' I am confident that 99% of them would say yes.' It's not just government cuts that have posed a risk to global health and poverty initiatives. Giving by wealthy individuals has decreased in recent years. Suzman said that's part of the reason behind Gates's decision as well — to inspire other wealthy individuals to pony up. 'The numbers of billionaires has actually increased significantly, but the number of very generous philanthropists has not increased at the same rate as the number of billionaires,' Suzman said. 'But we hope we can encourage many more to give, to give at scale.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman explains why it was 'more important than ever' to announce closure plans
The Gates Foundation, one of the biggest and most influential philanthropic organizations, announced plans to close by 2045. The foundation, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates 25 years ago, has spent $100 billion in that time, funded by the Gateses and longtime Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. It plans to spend $200 billion over the next 20 in the same realms where it has had a huge impact, including reducing childhood mortality and the spread of infectious diseases. The group initially planned to wind down decades after the deaths of its founders, but Bill Gates recently had a change of heart, as he wrote in his 'Gates Notes' blog: 'People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.' The decision was also likely shaped by the changing landscape of public health funding, most recently embodied by the closure of USAID, the federal government's arm that spent billions to fight global poverty and help those in need. Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, said in an interview that discussions to accelerate spending and the eventual closure of the organization began more than a year ago. While government cuts sharpened the urgency, they didn't spur the decision. 'This is at a moment now where there are significant cuts happening from the US, but not just the US alone, into areas that have traditionally supported our work,' Suzman said in an interview with Yahoo Finance (see video above). 'And so we felt it was more important than ever that we put a stake in the ground and say, actually, we are fully committed to this. And we think these are goals that are still achievable.' Those goals include further reducing childhood deaths from preventable causes. During the Foundation's tenure, they've fallen to 5 million from 10 million. The organization is also working to eliminate diseases like polio and Guinea-worm disease (the latter a cause championed by the late President Jimmy Carter). Suzman acknowledged that even for a large philanthropic group like his, spending is dwarfed by the amount of government assistance. The Gates Foundation's annual budget is about $9 billion. That compares with total US foreign aid of nearly $72 billion in fiscal 2023, $40 billion of which was allocated to USAID. The difference, Suzman said, is that philanthropies are able to take risks and fund innovation. He cited the Gates Foundation's work funding successful vaccine development. As for artificial intelligence, 'We think it's going to be an amazing force multiplier, but it requires an intentionality of trying to get the use cases that are going to help serve the poorest because naturally the market will go to the wealthy,' Suzman said. The elimination of USAID, helped by Elon Musk's 'DOGE' cost-cutting agency, rekindled animosity between Musk and Bill Gates. In an interview with the New York Times, Gates said, 'The world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children.' Suzman was more diplomatic and said there does need to be a focus on efficiency in aid programs. That said, he added: 'If you could go to a US taxpayer and say, 'We can show you how a single dollar of your taxpayer dollars is going and literally saving a mother's life in childbirth and allowing that kid to survive and not just survive but thrive. Do you think that's a worthwhile use of your tax dollars?' I am confident that 99% of them would say yes.' It's not just government cuts that have posed a risk to global health and poverty initiatives. Giving by wealthy individuals has decreased in recent years. Suzman said that's part of the reason behind Gates's decision as well — to inspire other wealthy individuals to pony up. 'The numbers of billionaires has actually increased significantly, but the number of very generous philanthropists has not increased at the same rate as the number of billionaires,' Suzman said. 'But we hope we can encourage many more to give, to give at scale.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Times
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Bill Gates: Elon Musk's cuts will kill a million children
The planet's formerly wealthiest person is not happy with the current one. Bill Gates said: 'The image of the world's richest man taking steps that over time will kill over a million children? It is a pretty stark one.' Elon Musk, who has overseen massive cuts to the US overseas aid budget, 'has not been out to see kids dying', Gates added. In his work with his foundation, Gates is, conversely, rather familiar with children dying. Thanks in part to Musk, he thinks there will soon be more of them. Each year, with all the diligence of a business, the Gates Foundation runs the numbers for its key performance indicators. Five million children die every year in the developing world before their fifth birthday.
Arab News
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Africa's Buildings' by Itohan I. Osayimwse
What We Are Reading Today: 'The Aquarium' Aleksandar Hemon's 2011 essay 'The Aquarium' is an exploration of parental love, grief, and the isolating toll of confronting a child's mortality. The essay was first published in The New Yorker and later appeared in 'The Book of My Lives' in 2013. Written with unflinching honesty, the piece chronicles Hemon's experience navigating his infant daughter Isabel's diagnosis of a rare brain tumor and the family's agonizing journey through surgeries, chemotherapy, and loss. Hemon juxtaposes the clinical detachment of medical jargon — 'external ventricular drain,' 'stem-cell recovery' — with visceral snapshots: Isabel's breath on his chest, her laughter amid IV drips, her small hand gripping his finger. At the heart of the essay lies the metaphor of an aquarium where the family exists in a suffocating bubble, visible to the outside world but severed from its rhythms. Central to the narrative is Hemon's elder daughter Ella, who processes her sister's illness through an imaginary brother, Mingus. Stylistically, Hemon oscillates between reporter-like precision and raw vulnerability. He rejects platitudes about suffering's 'ennobling' nature, writing: 'Isabel's suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world.' The essay's power lies in its refusal to soften despair, instead confronting the 'indelible absence' grief leaves behind. Hemon's writing grapples with displacement and identity, weaving together fiction, memoir, and history. A MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, he doesn't just tell stories; he uses language to find pockets of hope in shattered lives. Think of him as a guide through the chaos of modern exile — equal parts poet and provocateur.
