New Year. Old challenges. The Guardian discusses the perpetually important issue that while private charity and welfare may be a necessary societal cause it does not let the public off the hook of responsibility.

The BBC relays a study reported by the British Medical Journal suggesting that health related inequality is currently greater than it was during the Great Depression in the 1920ies.

Big report in the NYTimes on universal coverage of health care “in dirt-poor country,” Rwanda.

The Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, Magdalena Sepulveda in her Report to the Human Rights Council warns that the changing of societal patterns and family living arrangements means that older persons are at an increased risk of extreme poverty.

“Societies are abandoning traditional care practices,” the Special Rapporteur warns and calls on systemic measures such as realization of the right to social protection through universal pensions.