USAID/Djibouti's Health Project, the Expanded Coverage of Essential Health Services (PECSE) Project, (managed by JSI) has made remarkable progress in strengthening the MOH health centers it supports through physical rehabilitation and equipping them with better information systems. Feel free to direct inquiries to : schulmanj@state.gov

The fight against water-borne disease -- one of the most serious threats to child health in developing countries -- will receive a major boost thanks to groundbreaking work by an international consortium led by the University of Bristol and supported by a $13 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The consortium is developing Aquatest, the world's first low-cost, easy-to-use diagnostic tool giving a clear, reliable indication of water quality.

The World Health Organization more...

Since its establishment in 1974, the Inter-University Committee on International Migration has been a focal point for migration and refugee studies at member institutions, which include Boston University, Brandeis University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Harvard University, MIT, Tufts University, and Wellesley College. The committee is chaired by MIT as a program of the Center for International Studies (CIS).

African leaders meeting in Kigali have unanimously agreed to improve access to information communication technology (ICT) to address the continent's development shortfalls and cut poverty by 2012. (Source: SciDev.Net, 30 October 2007)

A gene-silencing technique that stops sperm binding to eggs might one day translate into an entirely new type of contraceptive, say researchers. Their preliminary experiments have used a method called RNA interference (RNAi) to block the production of a sperm-binding protein on the surface of egg cells in human and mouse cells. (via Verterinary Sciences Tomorrow, October 2007)

A trial of an antimalaria vaccine in Mozambique has found that it can be safely used in infants and shows promise in protecting them against infection.
(Source: SciDev.Net; 19 October 2007)

The Council of Science Editors has organized a Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development, in which science journals throughout the world simultaneously publish articles on this topic of worldwide interest on October 22, 2007. The goal of the CSE Global Theme Issue is to stimulate interest and research in poverty and human development and disseminate the results of this research as widely as possible. This is an international collaboration of 235 journals from developed and developing c more...

MIHR is affiliated with the Oxford Centre for Innovation. MIHR's concern is with the health and well-being of poor people across the globe. It seeks to find constructive ways to promote collaboration among all sectors involved in improving access to needed drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other important health technologies.

In recent years HIV prevalence estimates have been revised for many nations. The revised estimates, based on improved data, in almost all cases are lower than previous ones, sometimes dramatically so. "A few years ago UNAIDS estimated that 42 million people were HIV infected. Now the number stands just below 40 million, according to the 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic.....HIV prevalence estimates are generated by epidemiologists using HIV infection data from small subsets of the populati more...

Social Policy and Development is still one of the main research programs at the UN Research Institute for Social Development. UNRISD defines social policy as public policies and institutions that aim to protect citizens from social contingencies and poverty, and ultimately to enable them to strive for their own life goals. Through the research projects carried out under this program, the Institute has sought to stimulate interdisciplinary debate on the nexus between social policy and economic de more...