¤ AFRICA: AU wants peace, security and bigger global role in 2012
 WASHINGTON 12 January 2012 (IRIN) - The African Union (AU) has unveiled an ambitious wish-list of priorities for Africa that would give the continent a stronger global voice, boost democracy and encourage peace and security. |
¤ HEALTH: Yaws treatment study prompts WHO review
 BANGKOK 11 January 2012 (IRIN) - Findings that a one-time oral treatment to cure yaws, a neglected tropical disease, is as effective as the currently recommended penicillin injection have prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to convene a meeting on how the disease may be wiped out. |
¤ FOOD: Rumpus over GM food aid
 JOHANNESBURG 18 October 2011 (IRIN) - Genetically modified (GM) food aid bound for Africa has long been a bone of contention among governments, scientists, activists, consumers and aid workers. |
¤ WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA: Cholera thriving two years on
 DAKAR 12 October 2011 (IRIN) - Three simultaneous cholera epidemics have affected 24 countries in West and Central Africa, with 85,000 infections and 2,466 deaths since the beginning of 2011, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). |
¤ HEALTH: Cervical cancer on the rise in developing world
 LONDON 20 September 2011 (IRIN) - Last year, an estimated two million women around the world developed breast cancer or cancer of the cervix (the neck of the womb); more than 600,000 died – the equivalent of six large passenger planes crashing every single day. |
¤ HEALTH: Cholera soars in Lake Chad Basin countries
 DAKAR 30 August 2011 (IRIN) - Cholera has killed at least 1,200 people this year in the countries surrounding Lake Chad - Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria; the illness, linked primarily to poor sanitation and lack of potable water, has struck some 38,800 people in the region this year and continues to spread. |
¤ CAMEROON: SMS, singers and nets against malaria
 DAKAR 19 August 2011 (IRIN) - “It’s 9pm. Are you and your family sleeping under a mosquito net?” That message - delivered by government officials, artists and other personalities in Cameroon - will run on private and state-run media each evening from 20 August as part of a nationwide media blitz accompanying the distribution of long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets. |
¤ CAMEROON: Cholera fight goes local
 DAKAR 28 June 2011 (IRIN) - Devolving power to local authorities is helping Cameroon step up its fight against a two-year cholera outbreak, say government and aid agency staff. |
¤ WEST AFRICA: Meningitis cases dramatically down
 OUAGADOUGOU 15 June 2011 (IRIN) - The roll-out of a revolutionary meningitis vaccination in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has dramatically cut transmission rates, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and if each country can find sufficient funds to co-finance the campaign, it will be extended to all 25 countries in the Africa meningitis belt by 2016, says the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). |
¤ FOOD: Home-grown nutrition research for Africa
 JOHANNESBURG 21 April 2011 (IRIN) - A group of international academic institutions and an NGO backed by the European Union (EU) have launched Sustainable Nutrition Research for Africa in the Years to come, or SUNRAY, to develop a nutrition agenda for Africa, with specific emphasis on the 34 sub-Saharan countries. |
