Salma Hayek against Tetanus
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An actress, a diaper manufacturer, and UNICEF join forces to help eradicate tetanus.

salma.jpgActress Salma Hayek appealed on Thursday to mothers to support a global campaign to eliminate tetanus, which kills a newborn baby every three minutes in a poor country.

Hayek, spokeswoman for the Pampers/UNICEF campaign against tetanus, went to Sierra Leone last week to take part in an vaccination drive against the disease.

For each specially-marked pack of Pampers diapers sold through year-end, Procter & Gamble has pledged to donate a vaccine. UNICEF hopes to wipe out the scourge, blamed for the deaths of 140,000 babies and 30,000 mothers each year, by 2012.

"I had no idea how much it was going to really personally move me ... to actually see it in Sierra Leone," Hayek told a news conference in Geneva.

Sierra Leone is among 50 countries where newborn babies and mothers die of tetanus, which has been eradicated in industrial countries, according to the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Read the full article here, and contribute to the campaign here.

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November 12, 2008


Taking the Fight Against Malaria to the Front Lines
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Six weeks before his election on November 4, President-elect Barack Obama made a promise to the one million people around the world who die from Malaria each year. "When I am President," he said, "We will set the goal of ending all deaths from Malaria by 2015. The United States will lead."

This may sound like a typical grandiose promise made by a candidate seeking election. But to those in the public health community it offered validation that ending Malaria deaths is not some pie in the sky dream--but a goal that can be achieved in the here and now. Following through on this commitment, however, means that the fight against Malaria must be taken to where the disease is most destructive and most difficult to contain: refugee camps in Africa.

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