AU wants peace, security and bigger global role in 2012

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. full report

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. full report

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). full report

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. full report

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. full report

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. full report

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. full report

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). full report

GLOBAL: Stillbirths could be halved

DAKAR, 27 April 2011 (IRIN) - Preventing stillbirths can cost just US$2.32 per mother if governments, the private sector and international institutions adopt a package of 10 health interventions, rather than allowing stillbirths to be an almost invisible problem. full report