News and blog

Sonia Shah, Yale Environment 360 Since cholera first erupted from India’s Ganges delta in 1817, the bacterial pathogen has swept across the globe in no fewer than seven worldwide pandemics, afflicting hundreds of millions of people and killing more than 70 percent of its victims within...

Yojana Sharma, Science and Development Network Nearly a third of anti-malaria medicines available in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania are substandard and possibly counterfeit, according to the latest WHO survey of antimalarials, released today (25 February). One in ten samples shows "extreme'" deviations in active...

Globe Editorial, The Boston Globe The measles outbreak at a Back Bay office building this week is a reminder that the disease is still a threat. Fortunately, a simple immunization can prevent its spread. Now that the only study linking autism and childhood vaccination has...

Carey Gillam, Reuters The Gates Foundation, which is already a force in agricultural research and development in Africa, said it would donate $70 million to a new collaboration that will focus on addressing threats to food production in the developing world, including crop diseases, pests, poor...

PovertyMatters Blog, Guardian.co.uk If you don't have a toilet at home, you might not get a bride in India. In a silent revolution of sorts, Indian women across the country, especially in rural and semi-urban areas, have a single condition before they agree to a match...

Isaiah Benjamin, allAfrica.com Kaduna — The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has begun another round of immunisation of 50 million children against poliomyelitis and 13 million against measles. "A national vaccination campaign to reach millions of Nigerian children under five with measles and oral polio...

Henry Jackelen and Jamie Zimmerman, Slate Earlier this year, the $21.7 billion Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was forced to retract or suspend millions of dollars in aid after rampant corruption was discovered. An audit of a modest portion of selected programs found...

Ben Wright, BBC News The UK is to stop direct aid to 16 countries, including Russia, China and Iraq, papers seen by the BBC suggest. A draft copy of a government review of its £7.8bn overseas aid budget - to be published this week - also reveals...

Ciro de Quadros, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Since the launch of Bill Gates’ annual letter in January, discussion has reopened an old debate among experts about whether the final push to eradicate polio once and for all is possible, or even worth the...

IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ZINDER, 23 February 2011 (IRIN) - Candid talk about human excrement is making people in rural Niger, where only 2 percent of the population has adequate sanitation, insist on building and using toilets: A project there is...