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Bad medicine: the toxic fakes at the heart of an international criminal racket
The recent news that another batch of fake meningitis vaccine had been discovered in Niger is just the most recent incidence of a particularly dangerous and cruel criminal racket. As many as 1,500 cases have been reported to a surveillance database launched by the World Health Organization in 2013, and that’s probably an underestimate, says Mick Deats, head of the substandard and falsified medicines group at WHO.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health, vaccines
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Press release: MyBucks Named ‘Best Financial Inclusion Company’ at European FinTech Awards 2017
Luxembourg-based and Frankfurt-listed fintech, MyBucks S.A., was announced as the winner of the Award for ‘Best European Financial Inclusion Company’ at the European Fintech Awards 2017 taking place in Brussels, Belgium.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
- Tags
- fintech
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Startup Accelerators Have Become More Popular in Emerging Markets — and They’re Working
Business environments in most emerging markets are complex and can be difficult for even the most experienced entrepreneur to navigate. So while running any startup is tough, we assumed that launching a new business in Mombasa would be much more difficult than running one in Menlo Park. However, we were surprised to find far fewer differences in the effects of acceleration than we had expected.
- Categories
- Investing
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India’s microfinance institutions are struggling for survival. Here’s why.
Two decades after India-born Americancitizen Vikram Akula founded SKS Microfinance, which was rechristened as Bharat Financial, the industry that delivered livelihood to millions of poor is facing its pincer moment with private banks giving a big push to micro lending.
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- microfinance
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The First MicroFinance Bank Afghanistan; Mibanco of Peru; and Cooperative Tosepantomin of Mexico Announced as Finalists for European Microfinance Award on Microfinance for Housing
This year, the Award highlights the role of microfinance in supporting access to better quality residential housing for vulnerable, low income and financially excluded groups with no or limited access to housing finance in the mainstream sector. This problem is multi-dimensional: sub-standard housing is not just an identifier of poverty, but rather it is the cause of a host of developmental problems.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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Can a UN social impact fund spark further reform at the organization?
A new fund to boost smart affordable housing options in Bangladesh is one of the first major announcements from the UNDP’s SDG Impact Finance initiative — an enterprise that took UNDP’s David Galipeau four years to convince the U.N. it needed.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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How Fintech and Payments Innovations Will Disrupt Global Ecommerce
With the growth of international ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento and payment platforms like PayPal and Stripe, the barriers to ecommerce are crumbling, giving life to new businesses, opening up new revenue streams for established players, facilitating economic trade, and driving technology advancements worldwide.
- Categories
- Finance
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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New Study: What does revised methane data mean for the Paris Agreement?
Revised calculations find that methane emissions from livestock in 2011 were 11% higher than modeled estimates based on data produced in 2006 by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). In response, media outlets including the BBC Radio 4 Today program and Agence France-Presse (AFP) released reports suggesting that the findings could mean that it will be harder for countries to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
- Tags
- climate change
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