Posts Tagged

Issue 013

In his first all-Conservative budget, the U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that from April 6, 2017, applicants for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) who are assessed as unfit for work but capable of work-related activity will receive a lower level of State Benefit, equivalent to Job Seekers Allowance. This means that the annualized value of benefits will fall from £5,312 to £3,801.

The British economy loses £40 billion a year due to sleep deprivation, per a new study¹ . Beyond the loss of economic output, sleep-deprived Britons are shortening their lives. The study shows that people who sleep less than six hours a night have a 13% higher mortality rate than those sleeping at least seven hours.

All over the world, people are living longer. A large part of this is due to improved treatment for illness; we can see this in the reduction in death rates from cardiovascular disease and the 32% reduction in mortality from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease worldwide in the past 20 years.

As we mentioned in the last article, innovation is the key to success in this fast-moving global market, and companies need to create cultures that allow people to bring their best brains to the table. Whether it is coming up with new ideas or dealing with day-to-day problems in new ways, interpersonal interactions play a very important role in creating innovative and successful global company cultures.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” A logical question is: With what? The announcement of member of the U.S. House of Representatives Tom Price (Republican-Georgia) as Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services provides some answers.

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates is the founder and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It has committed more than US$3 billion in HIV grants to organizations around the world and more than US$1.6 billion to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Gates answers questions from several African academics about HIV/AIDS on the continent.