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WORLDVIEW
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AFRICA
A Sudanese refugee at a camp in Tine, Chad.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa---As South Africans suffer from one of the worst droughts of recent decades, government officials are expected to endorse a campaign to provide relief to the over four million people who are affected. The relief measure would include assistance to farmers with food, water, medicine and animal feed. The drought has severely affected the production of the country's main crop, maize. South Africa may be facing its lowest maize production in thirty years.
N'DJAMENA, Chad---In a campaign to inoculate almost 90,000 children against measles, UNICEF and Chad's Public Health Ministry have turned to horses, motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles to reach inhabitants of remote areas. The campaign targets children between the ages of six months and fifteen years. It is estimated that half of these children are Sudanese refugees who have fled to Chad in order to escape the continuing violence in the Sudan. Measles is the deadliest vaccine-preventable disease in the world.
Angola bans genetically-modified crops.
LUANDA, Angola - In a move that imperils a United Nations effort to feed nearly two million hungry Angolans, the government has announced plans to ban imports of genetically modified cereals. Angola follows four other drought-stricken southern Africa nations - Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique - in refusing foreign donations of certain genetically modified foods despite widespread malnutrition and even starvation among their citizens. As many as nineteen thousand tons of genetically-modified corn from the United States may be turned back as a result of the ban. The U.S. supplies more than three-quarters of United Nations aid to Angola.
MOGADISHU, Somalia---Following the launch of a nation-wide campaign against female circumcision by a number of health and human rights groups, hundreds of women marched through the streets of the Somalian capital in protest of the practice. Such protests are rare because female circumcision is often seen as a right of passage, and is sometimes rooted in religious belief. The UN estimates that 98% of women in this Muslim nation are circumcised. The campaign intends to educate Somalis on the dangers involved in female circumcision and to make it clear that the practice has no religious foundation. Female circumcision ranges from clipping or burning the clitoris to cutting off the outer labia and sewing together the remaining tissue, leaving only a small opening.
A Nigerian child is administered a polio vaccine.
MONROVIA, Liberia-As of 9 March, there have been thirty-nine suspected cases and eight deaths resulting from a yellow fever outbreak. Yellow fever is a viral hemorrhagic fever transmitted by mosquitoes, making the imminent rainy season of great concern in attempts to control the outbreak. Only 66% of the population has been immunized, and a new mass immunization campaign is slated to begin this spring. UNICEF and WHO predict that controlling the outbreak will cost approximately $1.3 million.
ABUJA, Nigeria - A long-stalled polio immunization drive was finally launched in March, as President Olusegun Obasanjo vaccinated five children himself during a televised broadcast. The drive was launched in the northern state of Zamfara, one of two Nigerian states which had previously boycotted the polio immunizations, on claims that the vaccines were infected with HIV.
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AMERICAS
Carnival
BRASILIA, Brazil---Two weeks prior of the beginning of Carnival, a pre-Lenten festival, Brazilian officials handed out a record of ten million condoms in an attempt to control the spread of STDs and especially AIDS. Officials say that because people tend to wear fewer clothes during Carnival, casual sex in much more likely to arise. The "nothing gets past a condom" campaign is aimed at middle class and poor men aged nineteen to thirty-nine and especially at those who do not believe that a condom protects against the spread of STDs (and estimated 15% of those who are sexually active in Brazil.)
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil---Free contraceptive pills will be mailed to women (including teenagers) in an attempt to give low income women the same opportunities as those of wealthier women. The city health secretary says that the program is not intended to push birth control onto poorer areas. Rio de Janeiro is known for its slums and poor neighborhoods. The program already includes the free distribution of medicine for health problems and diabetes.
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States - Health workers in the Americas aim to vaccinate 40 million people, mostly children, against measles, polio, rubella, and congenital rubella syndrome, as part of the Pan American Health Organization's vaccination week this spring. Some countries will also vaccinate people against influenza and neonatal tetanus.
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ASIA
A mother and child suffering from dengue fever.
Asia - As governments China, Vietnam, Thailand and other countries in southeast Asia are poised to declare victory over the outbreak of avian influenza that swept through southeast Asia this year, international health authorities are urging continued vigilance and expressing concern about prematurely ending the fight against the disease. The presence of the avian flu virus H5N1 was disclosed in January. Since then, more than one hundred million birds have died or been slaughtered in ten countries, and there have been thirty-four cases of transmission to humans, resulting in twenty-four human deaths. Two United Nations organizations - the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health - warned governments not to declare victory unilaterally, in fear that loosening control efforts may allow the virus to rebound and mutate into a highly contagious and more deadly form.
PYONGYANG, North Korea - In its broadest commitment to date to the United Nations' humanitarian relief efforts in the North, South Korea has announced plans to donate 100,000 tons of maize valued at $18 million through the World Food Programme, along with over $1 million for a malaria prevention campaign and a UNICEF child health and nutrition program. The contribution from Seoul brings to $72 million the level of funding secured for humanitarian missions, although this still falls short of the $224 million that the UN says is needed to fully implement their programs this year.
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A dengue fever outbreak in twenty-six of the country's thirty-two provinces has killed 336 people and sickened nineteen thousand since the beginning of the year, according to health officials. Most of the cases were registered in Java, the country's most densely populated island. Indonesian authorities are aiming to control the outbreak through a nationwide campaign of insecticide fogging to kill the mosquito species that carries the virus. The outbreak numbers from this year represent a 50% increase over last year.
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EUROPE
A man smoking outside a bar in Dublin during a smoking ban.
BERLIN, Germany - Researchers announced the discovery of four genes that help or hinder the malaria parasite as it infects mosquitoes. The discovery, recently published in the journal Science, raises hopes of novel ways to fight malaria. Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes and kills one million people every year around the world, most of them children.
GENEVA, Switzerland - The World Health Organization warns that production capability of vaccines and antiviral drugs is nowhere near what would be needed to control an inflenza pandemic, which WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook called "inevitable." Following a three-day meeting in Geneva, experts called for the establishment of stockpiles of antiviral drugs which could help keep a virus from taking hold until a vaccine could be developed, a process which would likely take at least four months.
DUBLIN, Ireland - In a country where over 25% of the population smokes cigarettes, a smoking ban is now being implemented, prohibiting smoking in pubs, clubs, restaurants and most other public places. While response has been mixed and often critical, 81% of those surveyed in a poll last year welcomed the ban in pubs. The ban is expected to save seven thousand lives a year.
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