Thank you for staying with us. Well, it's still the breakfast on plus TV Africa. We're auditioning now It's different topics that are happening in Nigeria and around the globe right now. It's time for a hot topic And we're talking about the over 500 workers that have left Nigerian hospital national hospital in Two years and this was being said by the CMD Well, I guess today to you know, just give us more insight and this is dr. Shea Boulogne drew these an interventional cardiologist in over heart and vascular Institute, Virginia USA. Good morning, sir Thank you for joining us Very well, thank you. I hope I got your surname, right? I'm not your bar, but I hope I try Yes, I love that All right, so we're talking about the brain and drain in Nigeria right now, I mean you are on the other side your overseas and I'm sure you're leaving your best life there But Nigeria has this brain drain where almost everybody the goal the the Nigerian dream is to move abroad is to move away from this whole system and We're seeing this happening Time and time again Almost every day you go to the airport is filled with so many people and these are people who are doctors the medical Practitioners Tech bros, you know people that are supposed to be here to help, you know, push this nation forward and bring all of their ideas and You know just implement good good good things that could just help Nigeria really But we're seeing them move away and now there's a report that over 500 people have moved in two years So what is your take on all of this before we start to dive right in? Yeah Brain drain is a complex process It's a complex process and then you said I've been like you said you that I was in the US Well, I am in the US most of the time Okay, my welcome to you guys, but We do a Medical mission and education and program will be coming to Nigeria frequently. So I'm currently in Nigeria. Oh, nice. Nice. Nice You're touching base You're touching base every now and again. Yes. Yes. Yes, so The last time I was on this Interview on the breakfast show what we did was this was September We had a medical mission project that we do where we do interventional cardiology work of people's hearts in Nigeria. We do it in a number of locations they go to the University In a pool jar some other centers in in here where we come in and we just volunteer our time with equipment and everything to Walk on people's hearts. So I'm here actually For the same process this this week. So Brain drain is not always a drain.  We're left behind A few of us come back to your due process is trying to build our system to try to make the system more Better all together for our people Well, like you said, it's a very complex process And it's quite sad that, you know, I saw that news people article that was published talking about 500 workers leaving the National Hospital one hospital in two years. Yeah, I hear about Other hospitals facing the similar process and then I have friends, you know, friends, colleagues, mentees, you know Who reach out and then to the asking questions or just people generally who reach out on LinkedIn and other platforms trying to figure out what's to do with your lives and unfortunately Like it said the Jack Bar Syndrome. Yeah, it's a big deal. We're trying to get out of the country It's very complex, but I guess we'll do that Okay, so, okay I think let's start with the root cause of the matter because before we start to, you know Go up. Let's just start with the root cause. Let's start with what the issue the cocoa of the matter is What is the problem with Nigeria? We know there are quite a number of problems But what is the major problem that is causing this brain drain because we're talking about one hospital Just one hospital and over 500 people leaving in two years Imagine if we start to collate the numbers of different hospitals, you know in Nigeria and even in Abuja alone and then we go to Lagos, Potahakot and all of these, you know states We would find out that the numbers are in thousands and and hundreds of thousands and millions even So what is the root cause of the matter that is making people just, you know, move away? You asked a question. What is the problem with Nigeria? That's a problem Like I said, I know I know we have a lot Well, let's just talk about the fact that these medical practitioners are moving Yes, and so it's a very complex process Brain drain so I have a master's degree in public health and then one of the things that I did when I left Nigeria 15 what 2008 so that's 16 years ago Was initially on public health and the idea was to try to improve myself and both the health system improves the whole world's global health and One of and this is a concept that's discussed extensively in public health the push for phenomena There is what's pushing you out of your country and there's what's pulling you to other countries And so now it's a multifactorial process, you know Something pushes you out of Nigeria or whatever country you are Developing country to go for greener pastures, but there's also a pool on the other side What's pulling you the other countries them to us the other countries? Nigeria has a lot of push factors And some of those push factors like we know is our healthcare system, you know, not having adequate resources You know, you get trained You know, you want to be You want to be this you want to Be somebody who does procedures on the heart And as at the time I was finishing training, there was no place in the country That could give you that kind of resource to do procedures on the heart So you would hear that it's possible and you would read it in the books when you can't do it Now we've actually found processes So many of us who had that kind of mentioned in mind with leaving the country to do that That's part of what we're trying to change By coming in and do this programs in the hospitals to train the The physicians on ground that way they could also train the next generation So yes, there is that push of not having resources There's a push of not being paid salaries people are not, you know, people would like, you know Not being paid salaries, you know losing their income There's devaluation of the Naira. So they have purchasing power gets worse There are all those factors that basically make it such that In this day and time you see what you don't have in Nigeria But you also realize that in You know, once you just get online, you could be on Instagram, you could be on LinkedIn You see people succeeding elsewhere So there is that pull from other countries where Okay, look, I could just do this exam and get out And so that's those are factors that are happening and obviously we need to From a policy perspective Look at what we're doing on ground. Look at how we could improve the health system in Nigeria How we could improve resources for the doctors for the nurses for the Pharmacist for other people in the system such that they could do their work happily They could have, you know, I mean we as As trainees in Nigeria many times have to give our own blood We would pay for patients some healthcare who would give our own blood You know, because there is no patients can afford it people would die in your presence You get frustrated because you know everything you can do that you have in your mind that you don't have in the pharmacy To give the person or in the blood bank, but they can afford it and indeed die Those prostrations lead to the overwhelming sense of look, I can't do this anymore. I need to do something different So it's a lot of things that we need to do We may not be able to do as much for the poor factors Where that's based on the international of the other countries that are pulling Nigerian Human capital away But for the push factors we have to try to do less to push our people away And that I would say the first thing we could do is try to get Health insurance get health care available to everybody so that when you want to help somebody You're not frustrated because the resources you have even though they are right there beside you I can't give it to the child who is one year old that is dying in front of me because I can't afford it and I can't afford to pay because I spent all my money on the last patient So those are some of the factors that are coming Yeah, okay So I want to talk about the economic effect on you know Nigeria for instance You say we have a lot of push factors We're sending people away and Obviously that's going to have an impact on our economy because if we're sending people away So the money that we're supposed to be making the revenue We don't have that anymore instead another country like You know the u.s. Or the uk or or canada or any other country They are benefiting from these people that were pushing away and they are pulling them in so what is the What's the effect economically to us nigeria? Or rather to our own nigerian economy in this state? Yeah, so definitely very important health care spending in nigeria is hechillian We have the largest green population in the world And so our health care spending is never going to reduce It's going to keep you know in terms of our growth of our population over by 2050 We're going to be so Such a large population that we need to think about how health care expenses are going to multiply in that period And what are we doing for those people and how we develop in our capital infrastructure? Because when you think about it like you have to I am I am I strictly pointed out you have people who all Human capital a lot about human capital is leaving the country. Yeah, human capital is a sense huge part of Any form of capital is not just financial capital So you're losing all those finances to those countries and then we're losing people who travel Oh, I need to get a procedure done. Well, I can't get it in nigeria. So where do they go? They go to india So you have nigerian patients who would otherwise have gotten good care delivery in nigeria Moving over to and they were spending billions of dollars every year as a country on On on the under you know sending people out of the country people going out using Things that could easily have been done locally. I mean things are getting better in some perspective We don't want to always focus on the negative. I mean things are getting better in some perspective There are some procedures that we're beginning to have because like I said, you know, there are some physicians who Are trying to come back to the country and help develop the infrastructure we have here So yes, they are coming with some skill sets that we historically could not do here And we're beginning to do those things But altogether there's a net loss of human Human capital of financial capital all forms of resources that we have to take seriously You know before nigeria could say oh, we've always had this problem It's multiplying because you got to remember the focus of the internet Before there was we didn't know what we did not know So I had medical students in university You know, I didn't know what my colleagues were doing With the same skill set that I had because I couldn't see it every day But as time evolved I came to Lagos. I was talking to some people. I knew some things now You don't have to talk to anybody. You just need to just look at your phone And you see what people with the same skill set that you have are doing all over the world And you ask yourself I can do better And I do better. Yes. Does somebody want me? Yes So this change is not going to get any better unless you know The country the policy makers everybody comes together to create a something that is going to work Bring the people that the national medical association bring people to the table unless we walk on something that could improve retention Um, because we're going to lose a lot It's okay. So that was okay. Yeah, so I mean you just talked about some policies So what do you think are some policies that that could help um to mitigate this whole? You know jack batten from our system Yeah, I mean there's a lot that that can be done.  So talking about teaching hospitals talking about our hospitals You know to try to improve those from those structures because that has to be addressed improving infrastructure There has to be health insurance policies that will be made that will make our people get good care You know And then there has to be human capital policies that have that involve salaries that involve You know giving pathways to growth People will feel like okay. Yes. I could have my man And then there's you know, there's a lot on each of those components that we could actually do So I don't want to be short-sighted and say oh, yeah, pay everybody better or do all that It doesn't just walk in isolation. You just don't take it in silence You need to look at everything all together and say okay, what would I do from health systems perspective? And then what would I do? And then the major thing that we have is um health insurance As a problem, I mean many countries Have this problem and then they have had this problem right and then they walked towards improving it um, you know, um The you know It was improving how to deliver the services And so if we can do a system where anybody in Nigeria Who is sick can get significant amount of care can't get most of their care delivery Most of the people who walk with these people will want to stay because I feel like I could do what I was trying to do I can help people that's why we got into this field most people didn't get into this field because oh, I want to be um an influencer on the instagram But they got there because That cracks me up a little bit But go on That's everyone's goal now, right? But seriously, um, like you said, um, you know We have to figure out those systems and then I think you know, um from a public possible health policy perspective There are multiple tools that have been recommended. There are things that we publish we work I work closely with the group by john s Hopkins where I did my I'm public health and then we still talk quite regularly about stuff like this I still wasn't meeting with them on Friday And so we have, you know, policy things that we'll talk about what What we can do differently But of course those are focusing on the pool of what they can We all just we have to do our push and see how we can keep pushing people keep Keep from pushing people away because our system right now Just keeps pushing everyone away Okay, so you talked about, um health health insurance The truth is a lot of people cannot afford health insurance. You know, there might be a sex that can Um, because I think the average one you probably hear about would be about let's say 17 000 narrow um Probably annually anyway, so I think that should be like one of the cheapest ones you can find But people who cannot even afford three square meals People who are living in shanties How can they, you know afford this health insurance? So does it mean that their lives don't matter because I mean you would expect that the government should be able to You know give this to people there should be free health care That's like if you don't have if you don't have if you don't have people in your country You don't have a country because there's no country. There's no country to rule So what can we even do to ensure that people can start to afford this health care? Is there going to be like, you know some form of respite? Maybe like a palliative or something or you know subsidy? Um, I mean not the fuel subsidy, but you know just try to subsidize the amount That people have to pay for health care because health is wealth and your health matters a lot But what can we do um for people who cannot even afford health care right now? And even how can they go about it? Exactly what you're saying and that's exactly what we're talking about the push factors So the government policy makers Um in the federal government on the state level, you know need to understand that yes We are when you walk with the formal health center And then we try to which is great There's a great way to start when you walk to the formal health center to try to establish a health insurance program That will cover most people That's a good way to start, but it's not the end like you said 17 000 era A year is a lot of money for people who can't eat Some people spend their whole money just on transportation to get to work And they have no they haven't paid their they haven't paid their kids. They haven't paid school fees They haven't done anything else. So we need to understand that Health is a fundamental human right And so in our system in Nigeria, we need to have a national health insurance system that not just covers the formal health sector But for the formal income strength sector, but then the informal sector which means everybody So everyone should be able to get basic health care basic primary health care services Secondary health care services to a certain extent and then you know and we start that in phases and then we could build up With our resources at least get the basics in place get the secondary in place And then we start working on tertiary health care. Now, I know this is expensive Expensive to the country. It's important to understand that yes, there will be some adjustment in priorities in our In our budget in the way we manage our things both statewide um Local government wise and even in the federal government definitely But it has to be done because if it's not done The push will continue. So yes, I definitely agree with you um, it's important. It's really not practical to expect people to pay all of this out of pocket It has to be integrated in our system such that we have a national identification number.  Yeah, I mean I agree with you But I wanted to just ask one more question which goes off tangentially to be they're still in regards to this but Last year the House of Representatives passed a bill Saying that you know, all of the medical practitioners have to They're mandated to stay in Nigeria and practice for five years before they can move abroad Now you talked about some push factors where you said No adequate resources No payments of salary devaluation of the Naira But do you think that's also another push factor because you're you're telling me that Even when I'm done studying, you're not going to give me the resources that I need.  So that even still affects our revenue when it comes to The money that was supposed to make from education because people would want to move over to other countries to study And so that way they can move abroad. So is that a push factor for you as well?  Um, you know, because the And then when policy makers make decisions, I think it's always great to bring all stakeholders to the table Yeah before those discussions Yeah, I concluded because you know, the national medical association You know, obviously has an interest in keeping things Keeping doctors in place So we have interest in keeping things in improving our health system locally. So being able to walk with um The policy makers towards something that is sustainable not just bring some arbitrary numbers saying you have to stay five years Because then it seems like oh, yeah, you're going to be trapped for five years We're not going to give you any resources. We're going to frustrate it and you're going to be trapped for five years As opposed to okay. Well, when you're going into school, we're going to create this process where you're going to get funding So when you go to school, you're going to you're not going to be Begging for money to feed your food to eat or to pay your trophies or to do all of this We're going to have that incorporated in your training such that you won't have to Get um, you know, you won't have to take so many Um You don't have to deal with so much to deal to to gain for your education And then, you know, maybe that comes to the commitment for two years Maybe that comes with something else where you would have if you choose to you could sign that But then you know that you get some funding in advance in advance for that purpose But you know, if you don't give that anything or you say, well, you know The assumption is you're in Nigeria. You have this and so you now have to stay for five years. It becomes a trap So, you know, working together with our key stakeholders And then saying, okay, look, this is something that we can together create a plan for I think would be ideal um But and then, you know, and then with multiple ideas that have been proposed and together we can come up with something that Works, but I think we just have to just take it one step at a time Oh fantastic, but so final words. I'm just going to ask how You know, what are ways you think we can start to attract and retain our skilled workers? So we're not just in this same position whereby people study They practice for maybe a year or two And then they move abroad and all of these other countries are benefiting and meanwhile we are at the receiving end So what are some, um, you know, some things you just want to highlight before we wrap it up Okay, so first now highlight is We need and I'm not Because I know that policy makers are listening to this and that's why I focus on this. We need to have a health insurance system for management of our population The next thing I would say is That for the people that we have on ground right now Let's improve our retention packages Let's improve retention packages that will make people want to stay so well Look, if you stay in the country for five years and you walk in the in this kind of a hospital I mean, if you start from the government perspective you walk in a government hospital for five years This is what you get every year for retaining for staying but make it viable So it's something that I look at you guys It's valuable I want to stay because I want to get this every More 4 to 500 company every large institution that actually has great work cultures Have retention program and structure So they have to be aware of creating that so whether it's money Whether it's like we said we stay with the health insurance first because that is what makes people Have joy from doing what they do.  You would not be able to bring what's in your head Yes, you would not be motivated and then obviously We want to also create a system where people can come back and want to do stuff to create those facilities You know we could there's a lot of people there's the decision of Nigerian physicians in america and park And then I'm sure they have a lot of other medicines also across the world Of people who want to come back and help and then most of the time coming back to help There's like, you know, we want we feel like we've We're we're Nigerians. We love Nigeria. We want to give you back to that country So creating that avenue also where you could get a lot from Um, that's for our physicians and all the other other other other Practitioners coming back into help and then once they do that, you know, the system gets strengthened and some people might be more inclined to stay All right. Thank you so much. I think that's a good note to leave it We want to say thank you um for joining us and just you know, shedding more light on this. Thank you so much Thank you very much. Have a nice day. You too. Enjoy the rest of your day All right, we've been sticking to dr. Shea Bollinger. He's an interventional cardiologist in over heart and vascular institute from virginia USA and we're talking about the brain draining our system and how over 500 Medical practitioners how over 500 workers have left the national hospital in two years The optimist expects it to change and the realists adjust the sales and that is by william author word He is or rather he was an american motivational writer And so what we're just telling you today is that you should stop complaining Stop being a person is that's complaining about the wind make sure that you are an optimist Who knows that it would change and you're also a realist that adjusts the sales So whatever life throws at you do not complain about it You can feel some type of way But do not just stay there complaining and not doing anything about it Instead you should start to adjust the sale the sales of it. Um, you have to start to develop yourself Anything that can take you into that place That you aspire to be into that person that you aspire to be And so that's all wrap it up on the program today. You've been watching the breakfast on plus tv africa My name is bremer paul sin and i will see you tomorrow. Have a good day


What happens when you take a pulp hero like the shadow place them into the Disney duck tales universe and then put them in the Disney afternoon cartoon lineup you get a daring duck of mystery Champion of right swoops down from the shadows dark wing owns the night somewhere some villain schemes But his numbers up. That's right. You get dark wing duck. So let's get dangerous Hey guys Shannon here with coming on TV the only place on YouTube where all geek culture collides if you're new to the channel Welcome, make sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so you mess out on a single history and origins video Originally inspired by the duck tails episodes double-o duck and the masked mallard dark wing came into existence Due in part to the popularity of superheroes at the time originally However launch pad mcquack from duck tails was going to be the star of the show rather than the sidekick The final product of the series was intended as a parody of the superhero and action genre though officially set in two separate Universes according to series showrunners many Easter eggs throughout both duck tails and dark wing duck show they're held in the same shared universe Darkwing follows the adventures of ordinary citizen drake mallard who has taken up the identity of st Canard's resident superhero drake is aided by his adopted daughter Goslin who would occasionally take up the identity of the crimson quackette and later quiver wing quack darkwing and his alter ego Drake mallard were voiced by cartoon voice acting regular Jim Cummings who also voiced the evil version of darkwing from an alternate universe Known as negaduck and eventually negatron Goslin was voiced by Christine Kavanaugh and launch pad was voiced by terry McGovern darkwing's rogues gallery consisted of the for mentioned negaduck Megavolt liquidator quacker jack steel beak tuscanini and dr. Reginald bush root darkwing duck originally ran from september 8th 1991 until december 5th 1992 On occasions duck tails final season regular fenton crack shell better known as gizmo duck would make appearances in the series And this would lead to an eventually abandoned spin-off called justice ducks This team did actually make an appearance in darkwing duck when the fearsome five which consisted of negaduck mega volt Quacker jack bush root and liquidator attacked st. Canard. This led to darkwing gizmo duck Morgana macabre who became a reformed criminal sorceress Stegmut who was a duck that was transformed into a stegosaurus and Neptunia who was a mutated humanoid fish out to protect her home against the actions of land dwellers though gizmo duck Originally felt he should lead the team He eventually handed over leadership to darkwing if the spin-off would have made it into protection Only gizmo duck and darkwing would have remained on the team as the other three members would have been replaced by rubber chicken and two other characters The series darkwing duck was the first american animated series to be officially broadcast in syndication to the former soviet union In the duck tails reboot darkwing duck plays a main recurring role in the series at first Darkwing duck appears as an old television show which launchpad is a fan of the show first appears in the episode Beware the buddy system which depicts darkwing fighting quacker jack the liquidator and megavolt Launchpad states that the actor portraying darkwing duck is an old school actor who did all his own stunts named jim starling A spoof of his voice actor jim comings He reprises his role as a character and michael bell also reprises quacker jack Darkwing's first major role is in the duck knight returns with drake mallard who is voiced by chris diamond topolis Replacing jim starling as darkwing in a movie produced by scrooge After the movie was cancelled launchpad convinces drake to try and do the superhero gig for real drake later reappears in moon vision To help thwart the moon landers and in the end of the episode foul appears plotting to eliminate scrooge And his family following for the trouble they essentially caused with steel beak among their ranks mallard's adopted daughter goslyn and minor villain torus bulba will appear in future episodes disney comics published a four issue darkwing duck comic book mini series in late 1991 around the time of the show's syndication premiere This mini series was an adaptation of a draft of the script for darkly dawn's the duck like the tailspin comic before it It was meant to spin off a regular comic series But the disney comics implosion happening at time prevented that plan However darkwing duck stories were regularly printed in disney adventures magazine between november 1991 and january 1996 Additionally darkwing duck stories were also regularly featured in marvel comics short-lived disney afternoon comic book in march of 2010 boom studios began publishing new comics for darkwing and even connected it directly to duck tails by often having scrooge mcduck appear as well as other duck tails characters issue 18 was the final of boom studios run as they prematurely lost the license Joe books would later publish eight issues of the series in 2016 But cancel it due to poor sales in 2018 IDW publishing announced that boom studios run would be reprinted in disney's afternoon giant which debuted in october of that same year Hey guys, I just wanted to take a minute to let you guys know how much fun. I had making this video Reliving the disney adventures magazine. I had completely forgotten all about that until I started looking through the pictures to produce this video And just seeing the cover of one of those issues Really brought back a lot of memories. I remember standing in the checkout line with my mom grocery shopping They would have it up on one of the racks and I would usually get it once a month. It just Brings back so many memories looking through the magazine Reliving the disney afternoon duck tails Darkwing duck tailspin goof trip all those I loved watching those as a kid I just can't express how much fun and how much how many great memories came flooding back As I was making this video. So for those of you who requested this I want to thank you guys for requesting it. Otherwise, I would have probably put it off a while longer With that being said, I'm going to continue trying to put out history and origin videos on a daily basis At least during the week and then on the weekends taking the day days off until january 15th Because in january 15th, I will be going back to school So I won't really have the time to dedicate every single day to making videos But once I do start back to school, I will try and get out Get you guys some videos a couple times a week and I'm going to do a lot more history and origins videos You guys seem to really like those. Hope you guys enjoy this video as much as I did. Take care geeks If you enjoyed that video, make sure you hit the subscribe button right there So you stay up to date on all thanks geek culture Also, go ahead and check out one of these two playlist on the side for more videos Just like the one you just watched.


Hi, everyone. My name is Tal Oppenheimer. I'm a product manager on the Chrome team. And I'm excited to talk about how you can build experiences that work for everyone around the world. So one of the strengths that we know about the web is that it really is everywhere. It's on every form factor, whether it's a laptop, a desktop, a smartphone, or even some TVs. It's on every operating system, though it can be a little bit different on some operating systems. And what this really means is that it's also available across the entire world. And what this means is that as we're looking at the reach that the web has, the user base for the web really is anyone who has internet access. So if we look at the total number of internet users around the world, and we look at the top 10 countries over the last few years, we see that things have shifted a fair bit in just a few years. So China still remains one of the countries with the most number of internet users. And the US, which used to be second for a number of internet users, has actually been surpassed by India. And you'll also see that the growth rates are a little bit different here, with India very much up into the right, where some of the other countries aren't growing as quickly in terms of the number of total internet users. But you also see some other countries coming up here. You see Brazil, you see Russia, Nigeria, and you also see Germany and the UK. But what's really interesting isn't just to look at the snapshot of where our internet users are right now, but take a step back and look at where our potential new internet users are coming from. And so if you look instead at the number of potential new internet users per country, and again, if we look at just the top 10, you see a little bit of a different story here. You'll notice that the US and various countries in Europe aren't here anymore. And instead, you actually see that some of those countries that we saw that already are on the top 10 for the total number of internet users are also on the top 10 for total number of potential new internet users. So you see that countries like India and China, Nigeria, Mexico, and Brazil not only already have a huge number of internet users, but are expected to have even more. And so we expect this to continue to shift over the next several years so that really the internet users will be accessing experiences around the entire world. And if we look instead at how we are actually developing experiences today, we're all used to testing on different devices to make sure that the experience looks the way we want, not just on our phone, but on other phones. And we're used to testing on different OSes. But we don't always take that step back and look at how we can actually build our experience from the ground up with a global audience in mind. And the reality is that everyone uses the internet differently. I'm sure everyone in this room uses the internet differently. But as you look towards different countries and different people who come from various backgrounds and maybe are interacting with the internet for the first time on a mobile device, the behaviors and patterns that they're going to be using to access the internet are just going to be a little bit different. But what we've also noticed by thinking about this for the last few years in particular is that things are also changing really, really quickly. And that it's not just a matter of figuring out what's going on right now, but where are things headed and really responding to things as they change. So I just want to walk through a few of the things to keep in mind as you're thinking about building experiences that work for everyone, and specifically focusing on some of the changes that we've seen. So the first thing to note here is devices vary. We're all used to this. We've probably in our lifetime with smartphone usage seen how quickly devices vary just with what we have in our own pocket. This is also the case if you take this global stance. But it's more than just the form factor itself of how big the screen is or the dimensions there. And it's actually the capabilities of the device. For example, we actually see that in India, about one third of users in India on smartphones are regularly running out of storage. And this means that if you're actually asking them to try your experience out and expecting them to download something, you're asking them to make the trade-off of if they want to remove that photo or the video that they have in order to just try your experience. So this can have a really big impact on the number of experiences that people are willing to give a try. But beyond just the amount of storage based on the device, we also see that the device specs themselves are a little bit different. And this can have an impact on how people interact with an experience once they have it. If you look at some of the devices that were sold in the first half of 2017, we see that about 24% of them were under $100. And these devices often just have very different specs to reach this price point. So they'll have less RAM, for example, so less than 1 gigabyte of RAM or 512 megabytes of RAM.  App switching can be more challenging. They can have out-of-memory crashes. And this can just change the experience that they have. But beyond just the physical device, we also see that access really varies in terms of being able to access the internet in the first place and engage with your experience. We've talked a lot in the past about data costs and how this can be really prohibitive for certain people around the world from accessing the internet. But what's really interesting here is how quickly things are changing. So if we look at India, for example, which in the past we've talked about as one of the countries where data costs have been quite prohibitive, we've actually seen things shift quite a bit over the last year. So Reliance Geo, which is a mobile network operator, actually introduced unlimited 4G data for about six months. And this drastically cut down the price of data cost in India. And it wasn't only for Reliance Geo and for 4G networks, but it actually drove down the prices across all of India. And so what we're seeing is as a result of this one thing over the course of 12 months, the cost in India for data has really gone down. And if you look at the cost specifically for one gigabyte per month, you see a nice downward trend there. But what I really want to call out is that around Q1 2017, the price for one gigabyte per month dropped below 2% GDP per capita. And 2% GDP per capita is generally accepted by the Alliance for Affordable Internet as the threshold for affordability. So it's when the cost drops below this threshold that we tend to see users feeling more comfortable accessing the internet and not having to make trade-offs about the cost of data when they're thinking about what to actually access. But I do want to make sure to note that this is India. So India specifically has seen a huge shift in data costs over the last year. But there are still many countries around the world where data costs aren't even at that 2% threshold. They're actually well above that 5% GNI. And so we're seeing that data cost is still a challenge around the world. But it does have the option of switching very quickly. So it's important to make note of this and to not only plan to build experiences that are conscientious of data usage, but also adapting to the users who are most sensitive and going from there. Now, we all know that data costs can be a challenge in some areas, but we also know that connectivity can be a challenge. I'm sure all of us have experienced this low connection and complained when we have to wait too long for things to load. This is even more so the case when you take a global look at things. So if we look at a report from earlier this year that looked at the 2016 connectivity landscape, you'll see that 2G data connections are still really common around the world. And even though we're seeing that this is shifting in some countries, it's not changing particularly rapidly. So even in India, with Reliance Geo introducing 4G networks, if you look at estimates from 2017, it still suggests that in 2020, 53% of connections in India will still be 2G. And this is just strictly 2G. This isn't even accounting for the fact that 3G connections can still feel like they're 2G speeds just due to the load. And so this is just strictly 2G connections. So the reality is that connectivity challenges aren't going anywhere. And the need for really fast experiences across all of these connection types continues to be really critical for everyone around the world. And as a result of these different conditions that people are using to access the internet, there's also some variations in behavior for how they're actually accessing experiences and what they're doing with them. I just want to call out a few of these that we've seen so far. So one is that downloads are key, especially when it comes to content. So we've seen that connections are slow, data costs can be high, and people can actually spend days offline. But downloading content can actually address all of these. Because once you download content, playback, if it's a media experience, can be really smooth and fast, even if you're on that slow connection. You can re-watch or reread content multiple times without having to pay for that data again. And for those days that you spend offline because you ran out of a data plan or just don't have any connectivity or in our scenarios are on a plane or something of the sort, you'll see that you can still access content. And so downloads really is used across the board to address some of these challenges. But beyond just this approach to accessing content, we also see just different behaviors for specific verticals that people might be working on. So another one I want to just call out here is payments. When you take a global stance and look at payments, you realize that payments are way more than just credit cards. A lot of us are used to online payments directly meaning pulling out your credit card, typing it in, or using auto fail or any other solution. But this isn't the case around the world. If we look again at India, we actually see that there are 28 times as many debit cards as credit cards in India. So if you're building a solution that assumes that someone has a credit card to be able to go through a checkout flow or purchase the item, you're really only targeting in India a market of about 28 million credit cards in comparison to 818 million debit cards. And so it's really important to think about where your users are and how they're actually experiencing the web and the experiences that you're building. And what's more is if you look at this per country and are thinking about who you're targeting, you also see that the government can have a big effect here. So in India, for example, still focusing on payments, the government actually introduced the Universal Payments Interface, or UPI, which specifically focuses on enabling bank-to-bank transfers because of the lack of prevalence of credit cards. And after introducing this, we've actually seen this grow quite a bit. Most notably, you see a jump there between November and December in 2016. This is because this is when demonetization happened in India. And some of the bills that were commonly used were actually no longer accepted. And so this actually helped drive the adoption of UPI or alternative payment methods. And what we're seeing as a result is more and more experiences coming up that are leveraging these alternative ways to pay that aren't reliant solely on credit cards. So you have Paytm, or most recently Google also launched TES that was trying to think through how we can build an end-to-end payments experience that doesn't rely on users just having credit cards. And payments aren't the only thing. This is just one example of many. We also see as users are coming online from around the world that a lot of people speak more than one language. And a lot of people don't speak English. And so taking a step back and understanding what language people actually use is also important. In fact, if you look at some of these most rapidly growing countries, we actually see that about 20% of our users from around the world are regularly searching in two or more languages. And so we're seeing that this is already impacting their behavior for how they're interacting with the web and has implications for how we build for them. And so across the board there's a lot of different considerations that you needed to keep in mind when you're thinking about how you can build experiences for everyone. But one of the things I just want to jump into first is the web already helps with a lot of these. It can be really daunting to think of, oh no, there's so many things I need to keep in mind. But the web is fundamentally built to address a lot of these key issues. We know that with the web it can be easier to discover something. If you get a link, if you search for it, and you end up on the page, you've already found it. You don't need to hunt through it. And what more is when you're actually there, you don't need to install it to experience it. By virtue of getting there, you're already experiencing the product and what it has to offer. But we also know that it's not just about getting users to interact with your product for the very first time. You're also hopefully continuing to work on it and make it better, and you want to make sure that your users are getting those updates. And with the web, when they're accessing your experience, they're accessing the most up-to-date version of your experience. And you don't have any challenges of actually updating users to the latest version that you've built. And as a result of all of these, we've also seen that the web can have a tremendous reach. And so these fundamental building blocks has actually allowed the web to grow, especially in line with how large the internet access has grown over the past few years. If you look at the top 1,000 mobile web properties compared to the top 1,000 native apps, you'll see that even with the large initial user base, the mobile web audience is growing even faster than native. And this is in part because we've been working on moving the web forward across all browsers. And this has really been an initiative that we've been doing with all of you and a lot of folks around here to make sure that the web platform can offer the capabilities that developers need and that users need. And so we actually today have ServiceWorker, which is one of the key technologies that you all heard a lot about yesterday, supported across some of the most popular browsers around the world. So from Firefox to Opera to Chrome to Samsung Internet and UC browser, they all have some ServiceWorker capabilities to make sure that we can provide the best possible experience to our users. But there's more that you can do than just build a website. And so I just want to walk through some concepts to keep in mind based on some of those challenges that we outlined before for how you can build the best possible experience. So just to jump right in, we all know that storage is challenging. We've probably all experienced some storage constraints on our phone. We took too long of a video and now have no more room.  This is definitely the case around the world as well. And one of the really key opportunities we have here is that PWAs just take less storage. If we look at Ola, for example, which is a popular ride-sharing app in India, you'll see that they already have an iOS app. And the iOS app was about 100 megabytes. They also had an Android app. Their Android app was around 60 megabytes. But they were really focused on how they could increase their reach, specifically targeting Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India, where they knew that storage constraints were a real problem. And so they looked into their options there and actually decided to build a progressive web app, specifically to target this set of users and to expand their reach to areas where people have more storage constraints. And what they built was a PWA that was 200 kilobytes. Just want to emphasize here, that's kilobytes. I know 200 can look bigger. But that means that they were able to build an experience that was comparable and able to address the key flows that they needed for their users at 1 300th of the size of their native Android app. And that's compared to their Android app, not even their iOS app. And so this was huge for actually increasing the reach and the opportunities that they had. And fundamentally, what we're seeing more and more is that PWAs are a key strategy for extending the reach of your experience and making sure that everyone can access it from the get-go and don't have to jump through any hoops. And so what you're really doing is making sure that there are no unnecessary barriers to trying out your experience. And one of the barriers we talked about before was also around data costs. So I do want to focus on that a little bit. And while we've been seeing things shift in India, India is just one of many countries. And we want to make sure that we're building really for everyone if we're trying to extend our reach as much as possible. So in Chrome on Android, we've had for a while a feature called Data Saver, which is a server-side proxy for HTTP content to help users save more data. But what we also want is that you as developers know what you can do to specifically identify users who are most data sensitive and adapt your experience. And so what we have here is a save data header. And in Chrome, this maps directly to whether a user has Data Saver on or off and allows you to see who is the most data sensitive. So this is pretty simple. It's either on or off. And you can figure out whether a user is data sensitive or not. And this is standardized across browsers as well. And then you, depending on your experience, can decide what optimizations to make. So it might be that you replace images or you choose which images are the most critical for your flow. It might be that you choose to change the bandwidth of video playback or whatever it is. And you can really decide what's right for your user base based on the flows that you know that they need to complete. But what's also really important here isn't just saving users' data and identifying who needs that data saved. But you also want to make sure that you show users when you've saved data. Because if you've saved someone data and they don't know you've saved them data, they don't necessarily feel like they can trust you and that they can continue to use your experience because they're not sure that you won't just save more of the data than they expect. And we've been taking the same principle with Chrome as well, with showing for data saver users with just one tap so that they can see their data savings and learn to trust that the web is looking out for them and being data conscientious as they're browsing. But beyond just data use, we also know that memory is a constraint, especially as we see more and more devices being sold at $100 price points or lower. And what we want to make sure here is that it's not just about accessing that experience for the first time, but that users are really having a good, rich experience as they're interacting with it. And the first step to solving a problem is always to know what the problem is. So the first piece here is really to know your memory usage. And Paul Irish will be talking a lot more about this later today, so definitely check out his talk. But one of the key things to identify here is understanding where your memory usage is going and what opportunities you have. And memory usage isn't an equivalent constraint for everyone, so it's also important to identify which devices and which users need us to make the most improvements. And so we have device memory header and a device memory JavaScript API that can allow you to identify the devices that are most constrained. And we've been keeping these same principles with Chrome as well. We actually did a similar effort around our V8. And specifically, by focusing on devices with 1 gigabyte of RAM or less, we're able to decrease our heap memory consumption by 15%. And so the main thing here is to make sure you're keeping a very close eye on your memory usage and specifically targeting the users that are most challenged by this constraint to make sure that you're delivering a really high-quality experience and that it's not that someone will access your experience and then have an out-of-memory crash, because that's not good for anyone. But beyond just the device considerations, we also know that connectivity can be a challenge. And this goes across the board. This happens here. This happens in India. This happens in Indonesia. It happens really around the world, just the frequency of some of the challenges that can vary. And so one of the important things with connectivity that we talked about yesterday is that you can build across the board sort of fast, integrated, reliable, and engaging experiences. But I want to focus specifically on reliable here, because this is one of the considerations that comes up the most when you're looking at a global scale. And so similar to what we said before with memory, the first step here, again, is to know your connection and know what the challenges you actually face are. So we have the network information JavaScript API. And this is something that you can use to figure out what situation is your user currently in so you can adapt accordingly. In the past, we've talked about downlink max. And so downlink max would give you the information about the maximum throughput based on the user's connection. So if they're on 3G or 2G or 4G, what's the maximum throughput for that particular connection type? But we also know that that's not necessarily representative of what they're actually experiencing. So you can also look at downlink or around trip time, which will actually estimate these values based on recent connections that we've seen in that area. So we use our network quality estimator to give you more information about the actual experience that the user is getting. And beyond this, sometimes you might need the more detailed pieces of downlink and RTT, but sometimes you just need the high level summary. And so we also have effective type. And this can give you the details of, based on the current downlink and RTT, what is the effective connection type that the user is actually experiencing? So they might be technically connected to a 3G network. And so downlink max might give you the maximum throughput that a 3G network could provide. But the effective type would let you know that, actually, this is functionally a 2G network. And you should treat it like a 2G network and make sure that you're creating the best experience from there. But of course, knowing it isn't enough, you also want to make sure to adjust the experience accordingly. And we've had a lot of different topics and presentations about how to make sure your site is as fast as possible. But I do just want to highlight that service worker, which is something we talk a lot about for fully offline options, is also really, really helpful for addressing intermittent connectivity or slow connections. Whether it's doing request timeouts when you're on slow connections or just caching content so you can handle those intermittent connection situations, it's really important to think about how service worker can be used to build in resilience. And building for intermittent connections isn't just about the text and images on your web page. It's also about more interactive content that you might have or any media. And in fact, supporting offline is really critical for fast playback on some of these connections. We talked about earlier how downloads are really common as a way for people to access content around the world. And if you support offline, this is in part because playing back video content that has already been downloaded is just much more reliable on these flaky connections or on slow connections. But people are also sometimes totally offline, whether it's on a plane or just running out of your data pack or just having really lousy connectivity and going into airplane mode to maintain your data cost. And so we do have the capabilities on the web to fully support offline media experiences. And what's really exciting here is that one of the challenges we have with supporting offlining of media is that we need to make sure that we're still as developers in control of the experience. Because there are trade-offs here that you need to make sure you're following the media provider's expectations. And so with background fetch, you actually remain in control. So you can provide these offline experiences to users while still maintaining the control that you need. And this allows users to not only have video content or audio content that works completely offline, but also allows users to have quick playback on any connection type. And we're working on the same concept in Chrome as well. So we've all have the offline dyno came with the great game that I know you all play the physical version over there. But one of our main principles that we're taking here is we want to make sure users never hit a dead end. So if users do get to a page where a service worker hasn't stepped in to help, and they are hitting an offline dyno page, we want to help them bridge that gap as well. And so we offer an option for users to choose to download the page when they're online so that when they reconnect, we'll automatically download that page for them and let them know so they can get back to it and continue their browsing experience and so that they can access it even when they're offline. And so this is just one way that we're really trying to make sure that users are not hitting a dead end. And of course, as developers, we'd love for you to address this as well with Service Worker because this is just our one-size-fits-all solution. And beyond just the options here, we also want to make sure that when users are online and engaging with content, it's the best possible experience for them. And so for the multilingual users and users that speak many languages around the world, we want to make sure that we're tuning our experience accordingly. So reiterating here a first step to a problem is knowing what the issue is. And you have ways to actually know which language or language is your user speaks. So we have the accept language header, which will allow you to see what information the browser knows about your user's language preferences. And this doesn't necessarily have to be one language. So for example, right here, we see that the user prefers Danish. Otherwise, they'd be comfortable with British English. And otherwise, they can use English. And so this can just give you a way to understand what your user actually wants and adapt your experience. But sometimes you don't necessarily have information from an accept language header. And there's other ways that you can try to figure out what language preferences your users might have. For example, with Search Console, you can see where your users are coming from. So if we look into the countries here, you can tap into this. And then you can easily see the list of countries where your users are accessing your experience. So in this fake example here, we see that users are coming from China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. And you can use this information to understand to what extent is multilingual support critical for your experience, and to what extent is supporting your experience in different languages important. And of course, countries is great and can give you a sense of various language diversity of your user base. It's not the end-all solution. Some countries have an incredible amount of language diversity. And just knowing the country-level details isn't sufficient to know which languages to prioritize. But it's a great starting point to understanding where to dig in more and what you should really be prioritizing for your user base or your potential new user base. And if you do see that your users are coming online and using your experience from around the world and you do want to adapt to support different languages, we have a number of lower-level APIs that can help you do so. And so these can help you handle different languages, figure out the right ways to pluralize in different languages, appropriately match different scripts and customize accordingly. So you have the tools in place to also adapt your experience. So the main thing here is by looking at both the storage constraints and leveraging progressive web apps to make sure that users can get to your experience, you can build experiences that anyone can access. And if you take into account the data costs and specifically tune it to users who have expressed particular concerns about data, you can make sure that they feel comfortable freely using your experience over and over again. And if you look at memory, you make sure that the experience stays high-quality across the board, even when the user is facing memory pressure, and that it's adaptable to all connectivity types, whether it's slow connectivity, intermittent connectivity, or days that they may spend offline. And finally, you can also make sure that it feels personalized and really built for them by making sure you support the languages that they prefer and build experiences that work across all these languages. And when you keep these things in mind, you can build some really amazing experiences. And I just want to highlight a few here from around the world. So one here is Book My Show, which is India's largest ticketing firm. They build a progressive web app that's really smooth and feels immersive like their native app. But it's 54 times smaller than their Android app. And when they launched this, they actually saw an 80% increase in conversion with their progressive web app. And so they were not only able to deliver an experience that had much more reach, but they were able to convert the flows that they needed the most even better. To give another example, we also have Garbarino, which is an online retailer in Argentina that sells everything from home appliances to consumer electronics, and pretty much everything in between. And what they've done here is they've actually used Service Worker to cache things, to make sure that they load really, really quickly across all connection types. So not just looking at that offline support, but how Service Worker can be used to speed things up as well. And then there's also companies like Compos. So Compos is the largest news site in Indonesia. And what they did is they were able to build a really immersive progressive web app experience that not only works fully offline, but also sends user's notifications when there's most critical information. And by building these sort of engagement aspects that takes into consideration people's connectivity variations, they actually saw 1.6x increase in engagement as a result of this launch. And these are just some examples. We're seeing this around the world. And what we really see here is that everyone uses the internet differently. And we know that things are changing really quickly, but with the web we're actually uniquely equipped to help because you're able to reach all of these users that are coming online for the first time and adapt your experience as they're coming online and interacting with it. And what the reality is if you take all of these aspects into consideration we really do have a worldwide web that works for everyone. Thank you.


Scores of marginalized and less fortunate households on St. Lucia have begun benefiting from close to US$100,000 in items donated from the Taiwanese Embassy to the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment. The handover ceremony, which took place on January 26, 2023, at the Grossly Human Resource Development Center, included shoes, toys, speakers, face masks and sanitary wipes among others. In expressing gratitude on receiving the donation, Deputy Permanent Secretary Irene Gasper said the special effects items which will be distributed to needy families by the Community Services Unit of the Ministry will help improve the living conditions of endogen households across the island. This official handover of a number of special effects items donated by Simply Health Foundation through the Government of Taiwan is not the first, and happy to say not the last. From the year 2015, the Simply Health Foundation commenced its generous act to pay St. Lucia people through the Government of Taiwan and the Embassy of Taiwan to St. Lucia. Every year since then, the Ministry of Equity is pleased to be in receipt of a 40th container of various special effects items for use by our people. Taiwanese Ambassador to St. Lucia, His Excellency Peter Shen, said his government was again delighted to play a lead role in helping to change lives for the better. Here on St. Lucia. As our Prime Minister, Deputy PM mentioned, St. Lucia is now recovering from the pandemic, and Taiwan Government is here to extend our utmost support to the economic stability of St. Lucia. Therefore, among these 850 boxes of donations, there are not only anti-pandemic necessities, but also nursery bags, children's t-shirts, walking shoes, toys, curls, etc. And now Taiwan is still in the new year period, so this is definitely a new year gift. Seizing every opportunity to collaborate and work with other sectors, donors, funding agencies and governments in meeting its mandate of poverty alleviation, Equity Minister Hon. Joakim Henry said it was with ease that his ministry collaborated with Taiwanese officials. The handover ceremony, he said, spoke volumes and deepening faith in the notion that life can be made easier with the intervention of others. We are not a very rich country, in fact, we are considered to be one of the poor countries, so that the government takes care of the school, the government takes care of our hospitals, we have to pay our teachers, we don't give them a lot of money, but they are happy to serve. Right, teachers? I heard them say, yes, that's right. And the nurses and the doctors and the police officers and the firemen. And we build a school so that you can go to school. But that's not enough for you to survive, you need food, but you also need to be happy. So what we do, sometimes it is not enough for my money to give my kids everything that they need, and for me it's not able to give you everything that you want. And therefore, friends come by to help us, to serve us as we serve you. The ministry's social transformation officers have already commenced distribution of the items to vulnerable households, island-wide.