Aid for essential services for world’s one billion slum dwellers should be scaled up, Red Cross says

Governments and aid groups need to scale up support for the world’s one billion people who live in urban slums, says a report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. These people are at high risk of diseases as a result of poor access to health and other basic services.

“Acute respiratory infections, dysentery and diarrhoea, largely under control in high-income countries, continue to exact a significant toll on the health and well-being of a disproportionate number of those who live in the sprawling slums of the developing world,” it says.

It adds that unhealthy living …