Last week, Nigeria met an important milestone: An entire year without a reported case of polio. This leaves just two countries where polio is endemic.
Worker Health & Safety
“Enough is enough” – Asian labor rights advocates call for change as death toll mounts in Bangladesh
The Asia Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV), meeting in Bangkok this week, called for changes in the system that has led to disasters that have killed more than 1300 workers in the past eight months.
Earlier this week, a UN official told AFP that a child in North Waziristan, Pakistan had contracted polio — the first reported case since tribesman in North Waziristan stopped authorities from conducted a vaccination campaign in June last year
Infectious Diseases & Vaccines
UN halts Pakistan polio vaccination campaign after eight workers killed in 48 hours
Over the course of 48 hours, gunmen shot and killed eight vaccination workers in and around Karachi and Peshawar.
Some villages in Pakistan’s Sindh province are still underwater following August’s floods, and a new UNICEF survey has found that nearly one-fourth of the children under five there are malnourished. The deputy head of UNICEF Pakistan, Karen Allen, calls conditions “shockingly bad” and compares them to “the worst of the famine in Ethiopia, Darfur, and […]
When severe flooding in Pakistan left millions of people without food, shelter, and water, I wrote a post wondering why that disaster was getting less attention than Haiti’s earthquake. I suspected the gradual nature of the disaster was part of the problem, and commenters had additional suggestions, ranging from Haiti’s closeness to the US to […]
Flooding in Pakistan has killed 1,600 and is affecting an estimated 20 million people. Six million lack access to food, shelter, and water. The report of a single confirmed cholera case (in the Swat valley) is generating some headlines, but the important point is that a lack of clean water makes the spread of any […]