Malaria vaccine is a medical breakthrough
The first-ever malaria vaccine, which was shown to cut the risk of infection by half among children in sub-Saharan Africa, is listed among the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2011 by TIME magazine. Results from the ongoing trial of the vaccine, which involves 15,460 children through 2014, will help public health officials decide whether to employ the vaccine where malaria is rampant.
Food and beverage industry must do more to stop hunger
Food and beverage companies, just a few of whom control thousands of brands around the world, have a bigger role to play in reducing global poverty, writes Jordan Dey, former U.S. director of the UN World Food Program. The companies generally buy ingredients, such as corn, rice, wheat and cocoa, from wealthier countries when they could be buying them from small farmers in the developing world, providing subsistence farmers — who make up 70% of the world’s poor — with dependable buyers who pay fair prices.
Human Rights Watch pressures Yemen on child brides
After an agreed resolution to Yemen’s months of political unrest, Human Rights Watch is pressing its campaign against child marriage in the country. The organization is calling on the Yemeni government to ban marriage for girls under 18, noting that the arrangements often pair them with much older men, affecting the brides’ health and denying them a chance at education.
Can modifying mosquitoes end malaria?
Efforts to genetically modify mosquitoes against carrying the malaria parasite could translate into major development gains for Africa if successful, researchers say. Ending malaria, which causes 1 million deaths a year, is a key target of international public health advocates, but some believe developing a vaccine would pose less risk than releasing genetically modified mosquitoes.
Women voice concerns over climate change
The effects of climate change are increasing the difficulties women in developing countries have in crafting sustainable livelihoods, participants in the Rural Women’s Assembly in Durban, South Africa, say. Floods, drought and other extreme weather events are damaging the supply of raw materials that women rely on to provide for their families.
A look at the lives of Afghan women and girls after the Taliban
An audio slideshow narrated by writer and photographer Nick Danziger depicts the changes in the lives of Afghan women and girls a decade after the defeat of the Taliban. Danziger, who has been traveling to the country for the past 27 years, provides a sweeping account that features a girl hobbled by a landmine and women healing from self-immolation, as well as girls at school and women in the spheres of medicine and even politics.
Hunt for bin Laden haunts Pakistan polio fight
Pakistan’s efforts to combat polio are being hampered as a result of a faux-vaccination campaign used in the hunt to catch al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the United Nations says. Many Pakistani families have refused to get their children vaccinated in target areas between July and September, specifically citing the earlier fake as the reason.
School system aims to aid India’s female Dalits
Sister Sudha has launched dozens of schools catering to marginalized girls and women in India’s poorest areas in a bid to promote literacy and knowledge about sanitation, reproductive health and basic human rights. India’s Dalits, the untouchables at the bottom of the country’s caste system, number about 170 million and make up the overwhelmingly majority of landless, bonded-laborers.
