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Recent decades have witnessed increasing interest in the concept of the circular economy within both the business world and political circles. The circular economy spans the entire life cycle of products from product design through production, marketing, and consumption, to waste management, recycling, and re-use, and enthusiasm for putting the concept into practice has been identified across different sectors of the economy. This exploratory case study reviews how some of the leading companies in the paper and retail industries, have publicly addressed the circular economy. The case study outlines the nature of the circular economy, provides a cameo literature review of published work on the circular economy, describes the approach adopted for the case study, reports the findings of the review of how the leading companies in the paper and retail industries have addressed the circular economy, and discusses some wider issues. Keywords: circular economy, case study, paper industry, retail industry, greenwash, economic growth

The entire world seems to have responded to COVID-19 pandemic in a knee-jerk manner with a short mindset without building on the existing strengths of public health infrastructure. National governments cannot be blamed for this as we are dealing with a crisis that comes once in a lifetime. Realising this, the Organized Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG) an association of major health associations in this country has suggested measures for long-term solutions to COVID-19-like pandemics in the form of a policy paper by OMAG.

Smokeless tobacco (SLT) use is widespread across many nations and populations, and India shares more than three-quarters of the global burden of SLT consumption. Tobacco use in India has been largely viewed as a male-dominant behaviour. However, evidence from medical, social and behavioural sciences show significant SLT use among women and young girls. This paper highlights key dimensions of SLT use among women in India including prevalence and determinants, the health effects arising from SLT use and cessation behaviours. The paper concludes by providing recommendations with the aim of setting research priorities and policy agenda to achieve a tobacco-free society. The focus on women and girls is essential to achieve the national targets for tobacco control under the National Health Policy, 2017, and Sustainable Development Goals 3 of ensuring healthy lives and promote well-being for all.

Background: Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) aims to improve knowledge and awareness of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and infertility-related services, with the aim of improving the quality of patient care. Methods: A survey was developed and responded by a group of 10 ASPIRE board members to gather in-depth information about current practices, recommendations, and perceptions about SARS-CoV-2 and ART. The collected data were summarized and individual responses pooled among questions requiring voting. The overall rates were computed by response category. The group discussed the summary evidence, until a consensus was reached concerning a series of recommendation on how to make decisions concerning ART service provision during the current (and any future) pandemic. A two-tier recommendation was developed based on agreement rate and implementation priority. Tier 1 comprises recommendations in which the rate of “absolutely agree” responses were [Formula: see text]60%, whereas tier 2 refers to recommendations in which the rate of “absolutely agree” plus “agree” was >60%, but the rate of “absolutely agree” was [Formula: see text]50%. Results: The survey was responded by all participants between July 24 and July 30, 2020. Nine tier 1 and five tier 2 recommendations are provided concerning prevention, testing, personal protective equipment, informed consent, and quality management. The former indicates the situations in which most individuals should receive the intervention/procedure, whereas the latter relates to those that may be suitable for individual clinics and patients. Conclusions: This document provides the ASPIRE viewpoint on better managing infertile patients seeking ART during the COVID-19 pandemic. This expert opinion guide aims to help both competent authorities and healthcare providers to deliver quality and safe ART.

EMS personnel in the U.S. continue to be overwhelmingly Caucasian and male, with 75% being male and 85% identifying as nonminority. While the population of the United States becomes more diverse in ethnicity, religion, and race, the EMS workforce remains largely homogenous and does not reflect the diversity of the population it serves. Given the growing diversity across the country, EMS personnel will increasingly be responding to calls for service involving patients with different cultural backgrounds than their own. This growing gap between providers and the population they serve may exacerbate already existing disparities in care.

Background One year after the declaration of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) and despite the implementation of mandatory physical barriers and social distancing, humanity remains challenged by a long-lasting and devastating public health crisis. Management Non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) are efficient mitigation strategies. The success of these NPIs is dependent on the approval and commitment of the population. The launch of a mass vaccination program in many countries in late December 2020 with mRNA vaccines, adenovirus-based vaccines, and inactivated virus vaccines has generated hope for the end of the pandemic. Current Issues The continuous appearance of new pathogenic viral strains and the ability of vaccines to prevent infection and transmission raise important concerns as we try to achieve community immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its variants. The need of a second and even third generation of vaccines has already been acknowledged by the WHO and governments. Perspectives There is a critical and urgent need for a balanced and integrated strategy for the management of the COVID-19 outbreaks organized on three axes: (1) Prevention of the SARS-CoV-2 infection, (2) Detection and early diagnosis of patients at risk of disease worsening, and (3) Anticipation of medical care (PDA). Conclusion The “PDA strategy” integrated into state policy for the support and expansion of health systems and introduction of digital organizations (i.e., telemedicine, e-Health, artificial intelligence, and machine-learning technology) is of major importance for the preservation of citizens' health and life world-wide.

Background In Victoria, Australia, public hospitals are administered through a system of devolved governance. Overall, Victoria's public health system has a record of good performance when comparing measurable safety outcomes to the rest of Australia. However, in 2015 a cluster of preventable perinatal deaths were identified at a health service in Melbourne's outer fringes. Questions What were the factors that contributed to these preventable deaths, and what were the outcomes of the four key inquiries commissioned by the Victorian government after the identification of the cluster? What can be learnt by comparing this crisis in one Victorian health service to similar events at other health services in Australia and the United Kingdom? Methods This paper discusses the crisis at the Victorian health service and expands on the factors that contributed to the crisis, the inquiries, subsequent recommendations, and the response from the Victorian state government. Similarities between this case and others in Australia and the United Kingdom are discussed. Findings A common theme in the four inquiries into the crisis at the health service in Victoria was that inadequate clinical governance was a key factor that led to these events. As a result, a number of significant changes were implemented across the state to improve patient safety across all areas of health care. When comparing this Victorian crisis to similar events at other health services across the world, inadequate clinical governance consistently appears as a key contributing factor to poor clinical outcomes. Discussion All cases discussed had a delay in the identification of clusters of poor clinical outcomes. This was found to be a direct result of inadequate clinical governance structures at both a local and government level. Conclusion A robust clinical governance framework that is enacted at both the government and the health organisation level is essential to deliver high quality and safe patient care.

Refugee crisises have affected nearly every nation in the world. The recent influx of refugees into Malaysia is concerning as the government does not legally acknowledge refugees’ legal status. This brings about several questions regarding their survivability in Malaysia, in addition to whether the existing systems and policies are able to accommodate their needs for healthcare, education, and economic opportunity. Although they may have escaped torture and persecution in their own countries, they would still have to face hardships as a refugee in Malaysia. This paper will discuss the life of refugees in Malaysia from the; health, education, economic status, and social life aspects.

Covid-19 has once again brought into focus our limited preparedness to deal with epidemics. Most nations, across the globe, have responded with a resolve to come stronger out of this crisis and leaderships across the world have shown great commitment to protecting its people from Covid-19. Covid-19 has also taught us a few things for the future. One such learning has been that a strong shift in focus towards non-communicable diseases driving health infrastructure across the globe for the last few decades has come at neglect of communicable diseases. In that sense, therefore, the current pandemic has been a wake-up call. Organised Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG), an umbrella organization of professional associations gathered a group of health experts to develop a policy document on epidemic preparedness to limit the influence of epidemics like Covid-19.

Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Africa face challenges that require the intervention of national governments, development partners and other stakeholders. HEIs also require new investment paradigms to maximize students’ acquisition of work-ready skills, knowledge and attitudes to enable students to contribute effectively to the workforce. The objective of this study was to identify reforms and investments needed to strengthen Higher Education (HE) in Africa and to inform the design and implementation of future investments and policy for sustainable development. A systematic review approach, involving a synthesis of literature on this theme in Africa in recent years, by African governments, education networks, academia and international bodies, was employed. The study used data from UNESCO and World Bank databases which were blended with the synthesis of the literature. The obtained literature was analysed and synthesized on the basis of its relevance and value to the HEIs study discourse. Textual and thematic analysis tookcentre stage with a view to establishing current reforms in HEIs and the concomitant investments that national governments and other key stakeholders need to make to have robust HEIs. The study used the Human Capital Theory that postulates that the most efficient path to the national development of any society lies in the improvement of its population, which is considered as the human capital. Despite criticisms of the human capital theory at the individual level on the extent to which education is directly related to improvements in occupation or income, human capital theorists generally assume that after all the known inputs into economic growth have been explained, much of the unexplained residual variance represents the contribution of the improvement of human capital, of which education is seen as most important (Merwe, 2010). The results of the study show that HEIs have done very little to promote Intra-Africa Academic Mobility and nurture HEI-industry partnerships to address demand and supply aspects of the labour force. The massification of higher education, resulting in a democratization of education, and the advent of the knowledge economy and globalization, among other factors, are being experienced without commensurate planning and with no corresponding accompanying increase in resources to enable the HEIs cope with the increased student population. HEIs in Africa are sub-optimally capacitated to combat Africa’s pressing challenges such as unemployment, climate change and COVID-19 pandemic. The study points out that HEIs need to evolve in tandem with continental and global market needs to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4 on quality education. Further, it recommends that HEIs should encourage Intra-Africa Academic Mobility and foster HEI-industry partnerships to address demand-and-supply aspects of the labour force. In this respect, HEIs in Africa should be developing curricula aimed at building capacity of leaders and professionals to respond to the need to decarbonize and dematerialize development in Africa and leverage on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Consequently, HEIs must prepare students to be entrepreneurial and resilient; able to continue to learn and reinvent themselves and their careers throughout their lives. Indeed, HEIs should view themselves as creative hubs where partners come together and harness each other’s synergy to innovate and solve societal problems.

The first cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), previously known as 2019-nCoV, were reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China (Wu, Zhao, Yu B, et al 2020). The virus then spread to Malaysia and Thailand and eventually to the Americas, Europe, Australia and Africa. On the 11thof March 2020 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 a global pandemic. This concept paper explores the potential impact of COVID-19 on poverty stricken and conflict-ridden communities in Sub-Sahara Africa. In doing so, the paper also explored the implications for public health professionals working with these communities, including recommendation for future policy development.

Pandemics always create dreadful effects not only on human life but also drastically influence businesses and industries. Historical evidence has apparently indicated that the outbreak of Spanish flu, SARS, MERS, and Ebola viruses, all created radical impacts on businesses around the globe, leaving behind the economic structures into miseries and deprivations. Similar is the case of COVID-19 outbreak which instigated from China and dispersed all over the globe. In Pakistan, the first case was reported in March 2020 and since then the government has relentlessly tried to impose lockdown and social distancing in order to avert the harm. It has been substantiated that the public isolations and lockdowns have not only yielded negative impacts on the economy but also on different forms of business and employment. Therefore, this study is aimed to analyze potential impacts of COVID-19 on different forms of industries in Pakistan through gathering the public opinion as the source of data. The study is one of the preliminary studies therefore it is based on descriptive design in order to show perceived impact of outbreak of virus. Results indicated that the pandemic is harmful and affecting most of the business in negative manner however there are some businesses which are burgeoning on opportunities emerged from the pandemic and attaining growth due to the spread of the virus.

A review and discussion of UNICEF's report titled "The Necessity of Urban Green Space for Children's Optimal Development."

Self-Sufficiency is an undermined subject that has not been given attention since the early days of Socialism and the beginning of Marxism. With the capital-based economy and the rise of globalisation, most countries reached their lowest self-sufficiency level ever with the majority having only 20% capacity to depend on their products. This paper explores why SF is important now during the pandemic and in the New Norma and how these current conditions brought more opportunities for the subject to make people and decision-makers release more from the pros and cons of globalisation. The paper explores how countries and communities could benefit from SF to re-build more independent communities through optimising concepts as the eco-villages and animal farming that would also encourage the making of sustainable cities. The challenges and the solutions of future food security SF projects establishment are presented as part of the contribution of this paper. Further studies in the area SF during lockdown are recommended to extract the best methodologies of maintaining livelihood while we are fighting for life.

Aim Using an integrated model of health literacy, we discuss the importance of health literacy among foreign domestic workers in the provision of informal caregiving during outbreaks of communicable diseases. COVID-19 pandemic is used as an example. Background Adequate health literacy in the population is known to be important for the prevention of communicable diseases. Foreign domestic workers, a group of marginalized caregivers in private households, are generally presumed to have limited health literacy because of numerous socio-cultural disadvantages. To date, there is limited evidence that these informal health care providers receive support from community-based nurses. Design A discursive paper. Conclusion Foreign domestic workers, with varying levels of health literacy, may be viewed either as a resource to break the chain of infection or as a potential reservoir of communicable diseases in the community. Meanwhile, restrictions imposed in response to diseases transmissions (e.g., stay-at-home measures for COVID-19) may directly exacerbate the social support received by these foreign domestic works and their ability to access health-related information. There are also concerns about their ability to appraise and evaluate information related to communicable diseases at a time when fake news and misinformation is being disseminated through social media. Language and cultural barriers are important issues that need to be addressed to ensure that foreign domestic workers are in a position to follow public health recommendations. Relevance to clinical practice Nurses hold an important position in empowering foreign domestic workers with adequate health literacy, by engaging groups of foreign domestic workers in the community and their consulates in planning educational programmes and effectively disseminating information. At a time of global pandemic, an assessment of the health literacy levels of foreign domestic workers in places like Hong Kong is urgently required.

This Country Program Evaluation aims to assess the World Bank Group’s contribution to Morocco’s development trajectory over the past decade (fiscal years 2011–21) and is timed to inform the next Country Partnership Framework and future Bank Group engagements in the country. The Country Program Evaluation will use a range of methods to assess how the Bank Group has supported Morocco’s efforts to tackle major constraints to achieving its objective of reaching upper-middle-income-country status. The evaluation will focus on three outcome areas: (i) fostering private sector–led growth that absorbs a growing labor force; (ii) strengthening inclusive human capital formation and addressing the obstacles to women and youth labor force participation; and (iii) reducing climate risks and natural resource depletion and addressing their combined effects on the most vulnerable people, especially in rural areas.

The Lake Chad region, which is an economically-and socially integrated area spanning across four countries of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria in north-west Africa, has been trapped in a vicious circle of suboptimal territorial development and fragility. This note shows that the Lake Chad region lags in multiple dimensions of development ranging from poverty, human capital, and access to services. A poverty rate in the Lake Chad region is found to be much higher than other parts of the countries surrounding the lake. The regional poverty rate in the Extreme North region of Cameroon (59 percent) is three times higher that of the rest of the country (19 percent). In Nigeria, the Lake Chad region203 has a poverty rate (72 percent) nearly twice as high as in the rest of the country (38 percent). Chad is the only exception, where the poverty rate in the country’s Lake Chad region (31 percent) is lower than the rest of the country (40 percent).204 This is explained by the fact that the Chad region around the lake lies near the capital of the country, with a consequently higher urbanization rate and a relatively high population density. The note is organized as follows. Section 2.2 provides key statistics on poverty, sector of work, and human capital indicators in the Lake Chad region vis-à-vis other parts of the country and examine how the Lake Chad lags behind in different dimensions. Section 2.3 provides a diagnostic of economic geography with a focus on three dimensions of density, distance and division. Section 2.4 identifies a set of structural factors, aggregate shocks and selected policies that might be associated with the dynamics of economic activity and social inclusion across the region.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a continuous and robust impact on world health. The resulting COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating physical, mental and fiscal impact on the millions of people living with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In addition to older age, people living with CVD, stroke, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, and hypertension are at a particularly greater risk for severe forms of COVID-19 and its consequences. Meta-analysis indicates that hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and thrombotic complications have been observed as both the most prevalent and most dangerous co-morbidities in COVID-19 patients. And despite the nearly incalculable physical, mental, emotional, and economic toll of this pandemic, forthcoming public health figures continue to place cardiovascular disease as the number one cause of death across the globe in the year 2020. The world simply cannot wait for the next pandemic to invest in NCDs. Social determinants of health cannot be addressed only through the healthcare system, but a more holistic multisectoral approach with at its basis the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is needed to truly address social and economic inequalities and build more resilient systems. Yet there is reason for hope: the 2019 UN Political Declaration on UHC provides a strong framework for building more resilient health systems, with explicit calls for investment in NCDs and references to fiscal policies that put such investment firmly within reach. By further cementing the importance of addressing circulatory health in a future Framework Convention on Emergency Preparedness, WHO Member States can take concrete steps towards a pandemic-free future. As the chief representatives of the global circulatory health community and patients, the Global Coalition for Circulatory Health calls for increased support for the healthcare workforce, global vaccine equity, embracing new models of care and digital health solutions, as well as fiscal policies on unhealthy commodities to support these investments.

One of the most common issues on the word right now is green building technology, with the goal of reducing the development industry's various negative effects on the environment, society, and economy. Because pollution and global warming are quickly expanding over the planet, the world urgently requires a sustainable and reasonable development. Because of the increase in Green House Gases (GHGs), dramatic climatical differences occurring everyday have been noted and are being faced by almost everyone all over the world. Within settled countries such as the United States of America, Russia, Australia, and the United Kingdom, there have already been rigorous steps taken to achieve workable development, as well as rules and regulations enacted by their respective governments to assist and accomplish a workable and environmentally approachable development of their countries. However, emerging countries such as India, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and others are dragging in terms of founding supportable growth and environmentally friendly structures. In addition, there is a deficiency of public understanding about this worldwide issue in these emerging countries. According to surveys and study, these countries are also far behind schedule the established nations of the world. This article discusses the need for maintainable growth around the world, particularly in emerging countries such as India and China, which have enormous land-living masses and are fast emerging, with the potential to become new global superpowers in the near future. It also includes sustainable and monetary research with connections to Indian contexts, as well as a recent live instance study of a freshly built and constructed luxurious housing home in a densely populated area of India. The case study is a inhabited house that is planned and built as a sustainable and green structure in an extremely community inside the state of Maharashtra, India, as India is also known as a country of villages with the world's second largest population. According to India's 2012 census, 69.84 percent of the population, or 869.17 million people, live in 6,47,861 distinct villages. By using straightforward, simple, and cost-effective strategies, this study will assist Indian communities and residential buildings in becoming more sustainable and greener.

Accessible passenger transport and personal mobility in public transportation are essential factors of Smart Cities. While ongoing transport research focuses on covering ‘first mile and last mile’, it lacks the perspective of the AAL domain, enabling personal mobility for older adults and persons with disabilities. Therefore, an investigation of the current situation of transportation systems in Vienna and Zurich, analysing five mayor action areas was carried out. The identified issues are highlighted thus suggesting a policy-driven approach for implementation of an accessible and intermodal transport system based on a public transport model, which is able to tackle the first mile and last mile problem for all passengers in general, as well as for older adults and persons with disabilities in particular.

This study is a systematic survey of literature on the energy-growth nexus, which has been carried out with a view to identifying the leading sources of knowledge in the forms of the most influential journals, authors, and papers. This study not only recognizes and classifies the well-known methodologies used in the energy-growth nexus analysis but also reveals intriguing content-based findings, with quantitative measures for the top 50 papers ranked according to the highest average citations per year. This survey is unique in that the process of selecting articles is entirely objective, allowing the research community's opinions to take the lead in the process rather than any subjective judgments of the authors. In this way, we examine 1041 peer-reviewed articles that specifically focused on the energy-growth nexus. We found that, as of the end of 2017, with 200 articles, Energy Policy is the leading journal publishing on this area while Energy Economics, with a total of 25,352 citation counts, holds the highest impact on this field of research. In addition, the most frequently cited article by the scholastic community in terms of average citations per year has been a literature survey conducted by Ozturk (2010) . Our study's main conclusion, based on a thorough content analysis, is that the nexus results of previous studies are generally inconclusive, with conflicting policy implications. This is not helpful and to a large extent is due to a lack of an appropriate theory. This, we contend, is essentially a methodological weakness and could be addressed by incorporating an appropriate testable economic/environmental theory.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard released the ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ White Paper in October 2012, describing it as ‘a roadmap showing how Australia can be a winner in the Asian Century’. This article provides a review of Australia's progress on engagement with Asia 2 years after the White Paper. It covers the political and performance status of key Asia-related initiatives following the election of the Abbott government. It finds a high level of continuity and support for individual policies and objectives in the White Paper. However, there have been some significant changes in policy, emphasis and approach and emerging areas of underperformance.

This country background paper examines the issues of sustainable development and education with regards to the current situation in Somalia/Somaliland.It expands on the TESF Somalia/Somaliland Briefing Note, which sets out the need for education systems in Somalia and Somaliland to be transformed and provides valuable context to aid understanding, analysis of and action on education and United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).