A higher fraction of infants are being breastfed in many countries. That includes the world’s fourth most populous country, Indonesia, which has over 280 million people. The Doomslayer reports that “Breastfeeding is becoming more common in Indonesia. The World Health Organization estimates that 66.4 percent of Indonesian infants were exclusively breastfed in 2024, up from 52 percent in 2017. This is a big deal.”
The World Health Organization says this is a good thing, because “Evidence shows that breastfeeding boosts children’s cognitive development by 3–4 IQ points, reduces overweight and obesity risk and provides lifelong protection against non-communicable diseases. Babies who are not breastfed are up to 14 times more likely to die before their first birthday than those who are exclusively breastfed during their first six months. Unlike formula production, breastfeeding is also environmentally sustainable, lowering carbon emissions and reducing packaging waste.”
The world’s second poorest nation is eliminating the blinding disease of trachoma.
In other good news, the African nation of Guinea recently eradicated sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease carried by the tsetse fly that causes irreversible brain damage, aggressiveness, psychosis, and then death, if left untreated.
Niger recently became the first nation in Africa to eliminate river blindness, a disease spread by flies that breed near rivers. Those flies carry long thin parasitic worms that burrow in a victim’s skin.
Sexual harassment has diminished in Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, as sanitation has improved.
