Public Health

The Ecuadorean government aims over the next five years to eradicate chronic malnutrition among children under one -- 10 percent of whom are now undernourished -- and reduce the rate among children under five from the current 22 percent to seven percent.

BP says it is no longer using toxic dispersants to break up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Gulf Coast residents claim otherwise, and say they have the sicknesses to prove it.

Adventure motorcycle tours, and driving and racing events organised by tobacco firms. Canopies bearing cigarette brands in popular restaurants. Tobacco brands appearing beside the signages of convenience stores, whether along the Philippine capital's urban alleys or provincial roads.

By the time Thandi Khumalo* brought her seven-month-old daughter to the Red Cross Children's Hospital in Cape Town, help came too late. The infant had developed acute diarrhoea and kwashiorkor, a condition caused by severe protein and calorie deficiency, and died a few days after being admitted.

Wahyudin dreams of becoming a full-fledged caregiver, if not a certified nurse, in Japan. But the Indonesian worker must first pass the required Japanese-language national certification examination, which is far from easy.

Tobacco multinational Philip Morris may have had good reason to send out victory smoke signals when Filipinos elected Benigno Aquino III to be president in May. After all, he is a regular smoker who has said he will not quit the habit.

The Uganda office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the country's National Drug Authority are satisfied that the new version of the controversial Counterfeit Goods Bill does not threaten the importation and production of generic drugs by conflating them with fake drugs, as the first draft of the bill did. But health rights activists are not convinced.

With its latest hotline a surefire hit, the non-government group Aware Girls could not be any happier.

The memories of Zimbabwe's 2008-2009 cholera outbreak are fresh in the minds of everyone except the people who have the safety of the country's water in their hands.