Donors and NGOs welcomed the Sierra Leone government’s launch on 27 April of free health care for some 1.5 million women and children, but health experts say it is just one step in a long, complex process as critical gaps in the health system remain.
Author: WHES
Syrian security forces kill dozens of protesters
BEIRUT — Syrians who took to the streets Friday after prayers knew they were defying threats from their president.
Pakistan government failed to do enough to protect former president Benazir Bhutto and failed to properly investigate her murder, UN commission finds
“These officials, in part fearing intelligence agencies’ involvement, were unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions, which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken,” it added.
People in Jakarta’s slums must pay nearly $1 per day for fresh water while living on less than $2 per day, and bath and wash clothes in murky gray water from fish ponds
In Jakarta’s northern Muara Angke coastal area, a lack of access to piped water has forced people to bathe and wash clothes using murky grey water from fish ponds.
Campaign to eradicate polio makes real progress in countries most affected, Nigeria and India
JOHANNESBURG — A decade after the world’s original deadline for eradicating polio, the most tenacious bastions of the crippling virus — Nigeria and India — have recently shown remarkable progress in halting its spread, giving even some of the antipolio campaign’s severest doubters hope that it may yet largely achieve its goal.
Dams along Mekong River borders not thought by farmers or fishermen to ease drought
BANGKOK — In southern China, the worst drought in at least 50 years has dried up farmers’ fields and left tens of millions of people short of water.
In Timor-Leste, government and population cope between harvests
The World Food Programme (WFP) says about one-third of Timor-Leste’s 1.1 million inhabitants regularly experience food shortages, notably towards the end of the two lean seasons between harvests, October-November and February-March.
El Niño blamed for unprecedented drought in Vietnam
Vietnam is bracing for further forest fires because of the continuing drought.“The increase in forest fires is one of the most severe and visible impacts of the drought,” Pham Manh Cuong, a senior forest and environmental officer with the Vietnamese Forestry Directorate, told IRIN in Hanoi on 30 March.
Rio Tinto executives in China admit taking bribes
SHANGHAI — China’s high-profile prosecution of executives of the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto took a bizarre turn on Monday, as the executives, once accused of spying, confessed instead to accepting bribes from Chinese steel makers.
Music, infused with sorrow and joy, in honor of migrants to South Africa
JOHANNESBURG — Hugh Masekela, the legendary trumpeter, blew his horn, sang with bluesy fervor and boogied across the stage on his puffy, 70-year old knees in his “Songs of Migration,” a revival of the music made by those who came from all over southern Africa to dig for gold and search for work here in the continent’s great boom town.
