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Indonesia’s Microfinance Industry Faces Overwhelming Demand
A tattooed man briefly interrupted Wastiri as he ducked into her roadside stall, taking a seat alongside the slow-moving traffic that crawled down the narrow Tanjung Priok street. She flashed him a smile as he greeted her, beaming wide and toothless from her perch atop a worn wooden bench.
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- South Asia
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- microfinance
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Microfinance sector being gender biased?
Women represent 59 percent of the total microfinance borrowers in Pakistan, says a World Bank report titled "Are Pakistani women being served by the Microfinance Sector". This share is seemingly an impressive proportion for a male dominated society like Pakistan. Now take a step back and look beyond the numbers. Around 50-70 percent of the micro-loans drawn by women are passed on to male members of their family.
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- Uncategorized
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- South Asia
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- microfinance
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Pakistan Battles Polio, and Its People’s Mistrust
Usman, who limps on a leg bowed by the polio he caught as a child, made sure that his first three children were protected from the disease, but he turned away vaccinators when his youngest was born. He was furious that the Central Intelligence Agency, in its hunt for Osama bin Laden, had staged a fake vaccination campaign, and infuriated by American drone strikes, one of which, he said, had struck the son of a man he knew, blowing off his head.
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- Health Care
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- South Asia
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‘Lifestyle diseases more common among poor than rich in India’
The poor in India don’t suffer from fewer “lifestyle diseases” than the rich — they just don’t know it. A new study shows that the actual prevalence of common non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is far higher among the poor than they report, and is as high if not higher among the poor than among the rich.
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- Health Care
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- South Asia
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Is there a role for foreign development assistance in middle income Asia?
Across Asia countries are rapidly transitioning from low to middle income status. This transition is enormously positive, pulling millions of Asians out of poverty, massively increasing levels of education, and creating new opportunities for employment and wealth accumulation. But the ‘miracle’ of Asian growth is deeply unequal, with many in middle-income Asia continuing to experience extreme poverty, and exclusion from the benefits of the thriving regional economy.
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- South Asia
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- governance
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Abhijit Ray: ‘There is a yawning gap in early stage impact investing in India’
Five days ago, India’s largest angel investing group, the Indian Angel Network, started a fund focused solely on socially relevant enterprises, with its first investment in Gram Vaani, a community radio enterprise based out of Delhi. Last year, about $151 million (about Rs 902 crore) was invested in social ventures across India, marking the rise of serious interest in the space of social investment, both from mainstream and sector investors.
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- South Asia
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Hyderabad Debates Health Insurance Model As Public Hospitals Decay
On February 21, during the afternoon rush hour in a busy shopping center in downtown Hyderabad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, two makeshift bombs packed with bolts and nails were detonated in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the city’s history. Over 100 people were injured by the blasts, and many were transported for treatment to Osmania General Hospital, the largest public hospital in the city.
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- Health Care
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- South Asia
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‘The Govt’s decision of sending inexperienced MBBS doctors to rural India is flawed’
According to various sources, the Central Government and the Medical Council of India have reached a consensus about introducing a compulsory one-year rural stint for any MBBS student who wishes to sit for post-graduation entrance exams.
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- Health Care
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- South Asia