The United Nations is expected to increase its number of all-female peacekeeping forces from some 3% today to 20% by 2014. “We are already in Bangladesh and India as specifically women forces, but we need to expand that capacity because we believe that’s important; female forces can reach women in a better way,” said Undersecretary-General Michelle Bachelet, executive director of UN Women.
India inoculates 172M against polio
An ongoing campaign in India to vaccinate children against polio is showing that health services not only can be brought to some of the poorest and most geographically remote places on Earth, but that the disease, much like smallpox, can one day be eradicated. In just five days last month, 2.5 million health workers visited 68 million homes and inoculated 172 million children with a new, more effective vaccine.
India is rocked by food scam
India’s federal police are investigating the alleged theft and sale of massive amounts of fuel and food grains originally earmarked for the poorest of the poor in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, through food-for-work and school meals programs. Thousands of public officials and shop owners allegedly siphoned off the goods and sold them in open markets at much higher rates as prat of what Indian media is calling “the mother of all scams.”
Sri Lankan Tamils isolated in camps
Nearly two years after the end of civil war in Sri Lanka some 5,000 former combatants — suspected loyalists to the Tamil Tigers — remain in camps that are inaccessible to aid workers from the United Nations or the Red Cross. Another 18,000 Tamils are in so-called welfare center because of land mines, according to the former head of the UN mission to the country, which has seen 80% of its rice paddy fields destroyed by floods.
Why prioritize mHealth?
Mobile devices can be critical in keeping health workers in remote areas informed of crucial information and be used as well to quickly disseminate vital data on developing epidemics, writes Jody Ranck, who is director of thought leadership, policy and advocacy for the mHealth Alliance. The use of mHealth technology can help save many lives in situations where older means of communication have proved too slow. One example is the WHO partnership with DataDyne in Senegal to identify a shortage in midwives’ use of partograms to enable healthy births.
Bangladesh launches trial of cholera vaccine
Bangladesh is trying out an affordable cholera vaccine on a large scale in an effort that could save thousands of lives every year. Vaccines for the disease, which afflicts 5 million people annually, have long been available but too costly to administer across large populations. The new vaccine, administered orally, is being tested in a study involving 240,000 people in one of the poorest suburbs of Dhaka.
Cooperative campaign targets measles, polio in Nigeria
Eric Porterfield, director of Global Health Communications at the UN Foundation, reports on efforts by the government of Nigeria to battle measles after several recent outbreaks. Nigeria is working with the Integrated Measles Campaign, a cooperative effort with UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations.