Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Monday, July 30, 2012

How may I kick the bucket?

Execution methods are becoming more humane over time, but can the same be said for the criminals?

Rulers, and the governments after them, have used various methods to punish the condemned – crucifixion, poisoning, burying/burning alive, beheading, throwing them to hungry predators or in front of firing squads and so on. Methods have become more civilized over the years. Yet, there are instances of laws in certain countries that advocate public stoning to death (as practised in Iran), using chemical weapons to annihilate several hundreds (as Saddam Hussein did to Kurds in 1988), or starving the accused to death (principal means of handing out death sentences in North Korea)!

These methods are ghastly indeed, but they are thankfully aberrations! The most common roster of executions reads beheading, hanging, gas chamber, electrocution, lethal injection and shooting in recent history. Saudi Arabia has a dubious distinction of being one of the very few countries that still practise beheading. Between 2007 and 2010, as many as 345 people have been beheaded in that country. Hanging is prevalent in most countries. India, where as per Amnesty International, 33 people were sentenced to death in 2001, 23 in 2002, 77 in 2005, 40 in 2006 and 100 in 2007; belongs to this category. Shooting squads are deployed by a number of countries with 58 cases in 2010 – 18 executions in Libya, 5 in North Korea, 4 in Equatorial Guinea, 1 in US and Bahrain et al. Gas chambers and electric chairs are mostly practiced in US. As per the Death Penalty Information Centre, 157 electrocutions and 11 gas chamber executions were reported since 1976. Lethal injection has been pioneered by US (as the most ‘peaceful’ method of execution) with 1090 deaths since 1976; this method has now been adopted by China, Thailand & Vietnam.


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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Dead before they Could Live

Stillbirths are Becoming more Prominent than HIV cases in terms of Casualties. They cannot be Ignored Anymore

The annual number of stillbirths (a baby that dies after the 28th week of gestation, or during the third trimester of pregnancy) around the world is more than the number of people who die from HIV-related causes. Today, it is becoming a serious public health issue globally, especially in developing countries.

Some 2.6 million stillbirths occurred worldwide in 2009, according to the first comprehensive set of estimates published in the Lancet medical journal. As high as 66% (1.8 million) stillbirths in the world occur in just 10 countries. India leads, followed by Pakistan, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Tanzania. Stillbirths disproportionately affect the poor, with 98% of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries. An African woman has a 24 times greater risk of stillbirth than a woman in a high-income country.

These deaths are directly related to lack of skilled care at the critical time for mothers and babies. Two-thirds occur in rural areas, where skilled birth attendants are not always available for essential care during childbirth and for obstetric emergencies, including Caesarean sections.

In rural Nyanza (Kenya’s western province) for instance, health centres are few and far between, and many women lose their babies on the long journey from home to the hospital, while others lose babies by choosing to deliver at home. Unless better facilities for antenatal care are created and awareness about the causes and prevention of stillbirth is spread around effectively, these macabre statistics are only bound to grow further.


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