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Discover positive stories from South, Southeast, East, Central and West Asia, covering education, conservation, community and health with sources.
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Jakarta's 'Plant Raya Together' urban farming movement brought together 562 farmers across 5 administrative city areas in 2026, coordinated by the DKI Jakarta Provincial PKK Movement Team, the Food, Maritime and Agriculture Directorate, and the Environment Service. Each area planted a different flagship crop in a staged rollout running from February to June 2026.
Vietnamese police dismantled a cat theft ring supplying the illegal meat trade in Ho Chi Minh City in mid-June 2026, rescuing more than 400 live cats and arresting nine suspects who had trapped animals across southern Vietnam for three years. Al Jazeera reported more than 40 cats were reunited with their owners, and veterinarians and volunteers are providing round-the-clock care for the rest.
Bangladesh has pledged to train and deploy 25,000 midwives by 2030, phased over four years and prioritising primary healthcare facilities, to help cut maternal deaths toward the UN's Sustainable Development Goal of 70 per 100,000 live births. UNFPA Executive Director Diene Keita announced the commitment alongside Bangladeshi officials at the 34th International Confederation of Midwives Congress in Lisbon on 14 June 2026, noting the country has already cut its maternal mortality ratio from 574 per 100,000 in the mid-1980s to 136 today.
Universiti Malaya's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine ran a free community health and dengue prevention day in Ampang, Selangor, on 13 June 2026, offering children aged 7 to 12 anaemia screening and dengue vaccination alongside games and health booths. The event was organised jointly with the DUN Lembah Jaya constituency office and Selangor's SUKA community health volunteers, and the outcomes were confirmed in a report published by the university's Faculty of Medicine on 15 June 2026.
Drone footage from 10 June 2026 showed about 5,000 young flamingos at Lake Tuz in central Türkiye, protected by their parents. In 2021 the salt lake nearly dried up and thousands of greater flamingo hatchlings died. A water project now pumps water into the nesting areas.
Thailand's Ministry of Public Health highlighted its network of more than one million Village Health Volunteers alongside a new youth initiative, Gen-H, at events throughout 2026. WHO Thailand and the Department of Health Service Support confirmed the volunteers now serve as the country's first line of defence for community health monitoring and outbreak detection.
The Islamabad High Court issued a ruling on 22 May 2026 permanently banning authorities from poisoning, shooting, or indiscriminately killing street dogs, instead mandating Catch-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release (CNVR) programmes and detailed record-keeping. Dog Desk Animal Action reported the judgment restricts euthanasia to exceptional cases — confirmed rabies, severe injury, or terminal illness — under veterinary supervision only.
Mongolia's national Healthy Liver programme screened 1.15 million adults and cut hepatitis C prevalence by nearly half between 2015 and 2023. A peer-reviewed review published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice in April 2026 confirmed the results using Ministry of Health and hospital data.
Indonesia's energy and power quality meters market reached an estimated $180-220 million in 2026, growing 9-12% over 2025, with smart and AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) meters now the largest product segment at 35-45% of market value. IndexBox reported the growth is driven by state utility PLN's metering rollout and new renewable interconnection mandates, with residential households the largest consumer segment.
A two-year camera-trap survey of Aceh's Leuser ecosystem identified 27 individual Sumatran tigers, including three litters of cubs, with sighting rates nearly three times higher than earlier surveys, researchers reported in Frontiers in Conservation Science. Densities in the surveyed area came in more than double those recorded in the nearby Gunung Leuser National Park, evidence researchers called among the healthiest tiger populations left on the island.
Malaysia's Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital and the Ministry of Health gave 60 low-income Malaysians free cataract surgery at the country's first Cataract Carnival, a two-day event in Kuala Lumpur on 20 May 2025. The initiative drew on National Eye Survey III data showing nearly 160,000 Malaysians aged 50 and above live with low vision, and National Cataract Surgery Registry figures recording over 66,000 cataract operations nationwide in 2024, according to CodeBlue.