HIV in Washington, D.C. compared to African nations
If Washington, D.C. were a nation in Africa, it would rank 23rd out of 54 countries in percentage of people with HIV.
Neglected Tropical Diseases such as measles and river blindness are still a big problem for many developing countries - yet these endemic diseases are often ignored.
“There was often thought to be very little that could be done for them which has led to neglect from the scientific community and even the local population.” - Dr. Mark Eberhardt of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile in India health officials are close to wiping out polio, which has long plagued the population.
-KC
On Jan. 12, 2010, a magnitude-7 earthquake rocked Haiti, killing some 223,000 people and leaving 1.5 million homeless.
- - Photos of Haiti now.
- - About 500,000 Haitians still live in tent cities.
- - A survivor of rape in a tent camp tells her story.
- - U.N. said Wednesday the cholera outbreak in Haiti is “one of the largest epidemics of the disease in modern history to affect a single country.”
(Haitians wash clothes in a stream on Jan. 8, 2011; Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
(A 3D plot shows the nighttime brightness of areas of Niger over the course of a year. Image courtesy Science/AAAS.)
The intensity of light shining from cities at night could help identify hot spots where outbreaks of infectious disease are likely to take place, a new report published in Science shows.
The heavy rains soaking the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya — the largest in the world — would normally mean sweet relief. But this year the rains have also caused an uptick in cholera, a potentially deadly disease caused by a bacteria that spreads through contaminated water.
(Somali boys fetch water from a puddle in the sprawling Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya. Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images.)
Saturday, November 12, is World Pneumonia Day.
Did you know pneumonia is the number 1 killer of young children around the world?
A global vaccine campaign is working to change that our Global Health team reports from Nicaragua.
PHOTOS and a Reporter’s Notebook from Ray Suarez
This BBC News interactive is pretty mind-boggling.
Example: Jim Lehrer was the 2,156,395,664th person alive on Earth and 74,298,587,966th person to have lived since history began.
On Monday, a baby will be born somewhere and demographers will proclaim that the world’s population has reached 7 billion. Read more here.
The number of global newborn deaths each year fell by 1.3 million over the last two decades.
The best and worst countries for babies.
(PHOTO: Finland comes in fourth and has improved its newborn mortality rate in the last two decades, to 1.8 per 1,000 births. Photo by Flickr user Visa Kopu)
Wanted: New Birth Control Choices for Men
There is a new wave of research into broadening male contraceptive options, including a daily birth control pill, and “reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance.”
Photo courtesy National Institutes of Health.
