LONDON, 1 November 2010 - In 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates committed their foundation to eradicating malaria. It was, said Richard Feachem, director of the Global Health Group, part of the University of California, San Francisco,  “a shock to the system for the malaria community, because for a couple of decades the ‘E’ words, eradication and elimination, were not used in polite company”.That reticence was due to the very public failure of elimination campaigns, but the debate has been re-opened with the publication by the medical journal, The Lancet, of a special series on the subject.The study sets out the real progress that has been made, assesses the chances for countries that...

LONDON, 28 October 2010 - Corruption siphons off 20-30 percent of funding for basic services, estimates non-profit Transparency International (TI), and tackling it should be higher on the international development agenda. “Corruption is a tax, and adds to the overall bill of development efforts - the percentage of resources could be as high as 20 or 30 percent,” TI’s programmes’ director, Christiaan Poortman, told IRIN, following the launch of the 2010 Perceptions of Corruption Index. “It will hamper the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” he added. Research by TI into corruption in the water sector estimates in some countries that 30 percent of funds are siphoned o...

United Nations General Assembly, 28 October 2010 - Violence against children, and ways to stem that violence, figured prominently in a discussion between Member States and United Nations officials from the field of child rights, at the start of a multi-day discussion on the promotion and protection of the rights of children convened by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural).In her first appearance before the Committee, Marta Santos Pais, the Secretary-General's newly appointed Special Representative on Violence against Children, said she was counting on mutual support between herself and Member States to identify the most promising initiatives to stamp out violence against c...

South Korea, 26th October - With over 8 million children dying each year from preventable causes, a global financial transaction tax could be the solution. To be in South Korea as part of its hosting of the G20 summit which will be held on 11 and 12 November is to witness a piece of history.In the lifetime of South Korea's leaders, and in a triumph of development, the country has gone from having a GDP per capita lower than much of sub-Saharan Africa to being one of the world's largest economies, and is now a larger aid donor than some European countries. It didn't get here by following the "guidance" of the international financial institutions. Instead, South Korean growth came from redistr...

HAVANA, 25 October, 2010 - The risk of meningitis outbreaks rises during the dry season -- December to June -- in some 20 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Meningitis in the region is too often deadly, though the disease can be prevented with vaccination.Nana Diallo, 45, has her children vaccinated whenever possible. "It's one of the diseases that frightens me the most, because the person can be left blind or mute," the spice vendor told IPS at the Bozola market in Bamako, capital of Mali.Diallo's children may have been immunised with some of the 1.94 million doses of the vaccine that arrived in this West African country in 2007, produced specially in laboratories in Cuba and Brazil. But they...

14th October 2010, Johanesburg/Grand Bassam-  A UN initiative will push countries to design nutrition policies based on new studies that show good quality food for mothers and children in the first 1,000 days, including pregnancy, would not only save millions of lives but raise literacy and economic growth rates.The initiative - designed with input from UN agencies, NGOs, academics and think-tanks - known by its acronym SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) and led by David Nabarro, head of the UN High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, is only likely to come together in 2011.But already questions are being raised about the lack of consultation, and time and resources needed to s...