WHO stated that 88 nations don’t have any minimal age at which e-cigarettes could be purchased and 74 nations haven’t carried out any e-cigarette laws.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus referred to as on nations to ramp up prevention measures, saying that “kids are being recruited and trapped at an early age to use e-cigarettes and may get hooked to nicotine”.

Teen customers spiking

Children aged 13 to fifteen worldwide are utilizing e-cigarettes at charges larger than adults, WHO analysis has discovered, and within the United Kingdom the variety of younger customers has tripled prior to now three years.

The UN well being company stated that the merchandise generate carcinogenic substances, improve the danger of coronary heart and lung issues and may have an effect on mind improvement.

WHO additionally warned that the tobacco business “funds and promotes false evidence” to argue that e-cigarettes cut back hurt, whereas on the identical time “heavily promoting these products to children and non-smokers and continuing to sell billions of cigarettes”.

Decline in vaccine protection prompts measles surge in Europe, Central Asia: UNICEF

Measles, a vaccine-preventable illness which weakens kids’s immune programs and could be deadly, is up by a staggering 3,200 per cent this yr in comparison with final in Europe and Central Asia, UN Children’s Fund UNICEF stated on Thursday.

Some 30,600 circumstances have been confirmed within the area thus far in 2023 and UNICEF warned that numbers are anticipated to rise additional attributable to gaps in immunity as vaccination charges have dropped.

“There is no clearer sign of a breakdown in immunisation coverage than an increase in cases of measles”, UNICEF’s director for the area Regina De Dominicis stated, calling for pressing public well being measures to guard kids from the harmful illness.

The highest charges of measles circumstances in Europe and Central Asia have been recorded in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Romania. An estimated 931,000 kids within the area missed out completely or partially on routine immunisation from 2019 to 2021.

UNICEF highlighted that the speed of immunisation with the primary dose of the measles vaccine dropped from 96 per cent in 2019 to 93 per cent in 2022. 

The UN company attributes the drop in protection to shrinking demand for vaccines “in part fuelled by misinformation and mistrust” in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, disruption to well being providers and weak main healthcare programs amongst different components.

Lebanese kids pressured to hunt work, as crises rage on

The affect of Lebanon’s unrelenting, overlapping crises continues to worsen, more and more robbing kids of their schooling and forcing many into little one labour, UNICEF warned on Thursday.

The kids’s company stated in a brand new survey primarily based on knowledge from final month that oldsters are merely struggling to remain afloat, having to make do with ever-diminishing sources.

The evaluation reveals additional deterioration in virtually each side of kids’s lives, because the four-year-long disaster stemming from financial disaster, political turmoil and the Beirut port explosion, exhibits no signal of abating.

The company stated the emotional burden is especially heavy in conflict-affected southern Lebanon and amongst Palestinian kids.

Eroding childhood

“This terrible crisis is eroding the childhood of hundreds of thousands of children, through multiple crises not of their making,” stated Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF Representative in Lebanon. “Its severity is crushing children’s dreams, and taking away their learning, their happiness and their future.”

More than 1 / 4 of households stated that they had school-aged kids who weren’t attending courses, up from 18 per cent in April this yr.

Making issues worse, a number of dozen faculties in southern Lebanon have been closed since October attributable to an intensification of hostilities throughout the Israeli border, affecting greater than 6,000 college students.

Skyrocketing costs and widespread poverty are persevering with to power households to take determined measures simply to afford one meal per day and fundamental shelter.

Work, not college

The variety of households sending kids out to work to complement family revenue, rose to a surprising 16 per cent, from 11 per cent in April.

More than eight in 10 households (84 per cent) needed to borrow cash or purchase on credit score to buy important grocery objects; that’s a 16 per cent improve over six months, the survey signifies.

And greater than eight out of 10 households diminished spending on well being remedy, up from 75 per cent.

The deprivations and uncertainty are taking a heavy toll on kids’s psychological well being too, with virtually 4 in 10 households saying their kids are anxious, and 24 per cent saying they’re depressed every day.