A senior official from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iran has called for increased efforts to prevent HIV and AIDS from becoming an epidemic in the country.

"I am very impressed by Iran's social programme and in particular the country's approach to health issues," said Omar Abdi, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, on Wednesday.

"Iran's experience in these fields can serve as a useful model for other countries and could be central for increased south-south cooperation on social issues."

More

As top officials from the Group of Eight (G8) gathered in Germany for their summit meeting, UNAIDS urged them to show continued leadership on the issue of HIV/AIDS.

The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) "urges the G8 leaders to translate their previous commitments on AIDS into tangible action and to ensure that additional pledges on AIDS reinforce and build on existing" and praised the G8 leaders for their "unprecedented commitments."

More

Hilary Swank, the two-time Academy Award winning actress, kicked off a race--known as the Blue Planet Run--to bring safe drinking water to 20 million people by 2015.

"We're gathered here to acknowledge that for over one billion people on this planet, safe drinking water is simply not available," the Hollywood actress said at the launch in New York of the first-ever around-the-world relay race to raise funds and spread awareness about the need for safe drinking water.

Swank also lauded the men and women participating in the race: "Because of your efforts on behalf of the one billion people who struggle daily to get the water they need to stay alive, I know I'll never take a glass of water for granted again."

More

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint UN Programme Against HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have called for increased care and prevention services related to HIV.

The prevailing model now is voluntary testing and counselling, where individuals actively seek diagnosis. But experts say this system is impeded by the fear of stigma and discrimination, limited accessibility to services and the perception of many – even in areas with high rates of HIV infection – that they are not at risk.

Approximately 80 per cent of people living with HIV in low-income countries are unaware that they're infected with the disease.

More

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has released recommendations urging that all indoor environments be completely free of smoke. The organization cites extensive evidence of harm caused by second-hand tobacco smoke in their statement.

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said, "There is no safe level of exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke." Chan urged all countries to pass laws requiring all indoor workplaces and public places to be completely smoke-free.

There are about 4,000 known chemicals in tobacco smoke; more than 50 of them are known to cause cancer, according to WHO, which says exposure to second-hand smoke causes heart disease and many serious respiratory and cardiovascular diseases that can lead to premature death in adults. It also causes diseases and worsens existing conditions, such as asthma, in children.

More

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has noted that the world is lagging in its efforts to aid the number of people who lack access to decent sanitation; he called for concrete measures from Member States and civil society groups to remedy the problem.

Mr. Ban told the first preparatory meeting for the International Year of Sanitation, which will be marked in 2008, that "access to sanitation is a fundamental issue of human dignity and human rights, and also of economic development and environmental protection."

Approimately 2.6 billion people worldwide don't have access to basic sanitation services.

More

Nothing But Nets has been nominated for a "Webby Award" for excellence on the internet. NBN is the anti-malaria campaign sponsored by a number of organizations, including the NBA and the United Nations Foundation. It is up for the award in the Charitable Organizations / Nonprofits category and faces stiff competition from the the Denver Zoo.

Click here to register to vote for Nothing But Nets. And as always, donate $10 to send an anti-malarial bed net to Africa. Send a net, save a life.

At a UN-backed meeting in Beijing, experts called for the promotion of increased condom use for sex workers and clients as a way to stop the spread of HIV.

The meeting offered an opportunity for participants to review successful local efforts to promote "100 per cent condom use" or "no condom, no sex" in relations between sex workers and clients. Approaches vary, but generally involve cooperation among health authorities, police, entertainment venue owners, and sex workers trained to be peer educators, the agency said.

More

A trial testing the effectiveness of microbicides in preventing HIV in women has been stopped, according to UN agencies. The trial was halted because of a higher number of infections among women taking the microbicide cellulose sulfate compared with those in the placebo group.

In a recently released statement, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said, "This is a disappointing and unexpected setback in the search for a safe and effective microbicide that can be used by women to protect themselves against HIV infection."

The statement also noted that while there is no present explanation for the higher rate of HIV transmission, "the need to continue research to find a user-controlled means of preventing HIV infection in women is urgent." More

Jessica Ogden, a Senior HIV/AIDS Specialist at the International Center for Research on Women, says that while this cessation is a setback, "it is vital that the search for new HIV prevention options continue...Women need to have an option that is practical and practicable in the context of their everyday lives, and microbicide science holds out much hope in this regard."

For more information on women and HIV/AIDS, go to the International Center for Research on Women.

For more information on microbicides, check out the Global Campaign for Microbicides, the Alliance for Microbicide Development, and the Global Microbicides Project.

In any given year, the number of measles related deaths in the United States can be counted on a single hand. But throughout much of the developing world hundreds of thousands of people, mostly children under five, still die each year from measles.

In response to this often overlooked public health threat, a coalition of American and international organizations (including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Red Cross, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Foundation) teamed up in 2000 to form the Measles Initiative. The goal: cutting measles deaths by 50% in 2005 and 90% by 2010.

This week, a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet confirmed that that the Measles Initiative in fact exceeded its interim goal, and have cut worldwide measles deaths by 60% from 1999 to 2005.

From The Lancet (registration required):

"Between 1999 and 2005, according to our model mortality owing to measles was reduced by 60%, from an estimated 873,000 deaths (uncertainty bounds 634,000-1,140,000) in 1999 to 345,000 deaths (247,000-458,000) in 2005. The largest percentage reduction in estimated measles mortality during this period was in the western Pacific region (81%), followed by Africa (75%) and the eastern Mediterranean region (62%). Africa achieved the largest total reduction, contributing 72% of the global reduction in measles mortality. Nearly 7.5 million deaths from measles were prevented through immunisation between 1999 and 2005, with supplemental immunisation activities and improved routine immunisation accounting for 2.3 million of these prevented deaths."

[Snip]

"The achievement of the 2005 global measles mortality reduction goal is evidence of what can be accomplished for child survival in countries with high childhood mortality when safe, cost-effective, and affordable interventions are backed by country-level political commitment and an effective international partnership."

I would also add that like polio, measles may soon be joining smallpox as diseases that have been eradicated under United Nations auspices. These are huge public health accomplishments, and were only possible through coordinated international action.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) announced its plans yesterday to expand their efforts in delivering immunization and preventative treatments using a multi-disease strategy.

Noting the 60 percent reduction in measles death over the past six years and the related health gains, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said, "Increasingly, this initiative is delivering a bundle of life-saving and health-promoting interventions: bed nets for malaria, vitamin A to boost the immune system, de-worming tablets that help keep children in school, polio vaccine, and tetanus vaccine for pregnant women." More

Related: Dont forget to check out Nothing But Nets, which partners with the Measles Initiative.

"Surveillance for the HIV virus is weak in most of the world and prevention and treatment programmes often fail to reach high-risk drug users, homosexuals and sex workers, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

In a message marking World AIDS Day, being celebrated under the theme of Accountability, the WHO's acting director-general Anders Nordstrom said that tackling the AIDS epidemic remained one of the world's most pressing public health challenges." More

"New research says if the world acts now to decisively contain the AIDS pandemic, 28 million lives could be saved by 2030.... AIDS accounts for about 2.8 (m) million deaths every year.

But in a paper, two researchers with the World Health Organization estimate at least 117 (m) million people will die from AIDS by 2030.

Global mortality projections were last calculated a decade ago. At the time, researchers assumed the AIDS outbreak would start declining around the year 2000. One of the researchers, Dr. Colin Mathers, says what happens in the future depends very much on what the international community does now." More

"The global HIV epidemic is growing, leaving an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday. AIDS has claimed 2.9 million lives this year and another 4.3 million people became infected with HIV, according to the U.N.'s AIDS epidemic update report, published on Tuesday. Spread of the disease was most noticeable in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia." More

BBC News: "A new report from the United Nations Development Programme has demanded a big increase in spending to provide clean water. The UNDP wants another $4bn a year spent, and says that water has not received the attention it deserves.

Water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea kill far more people than HIV/Aids and malaria combined, it said. And the difference is particularly stark for children: water-borne diseases kill five times as many children as HIV/Aids.

The report says that water is a key part of human development - and warns that, in particular, sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world in the provision of basic services."

"Ten years after the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) in Rome, which promised to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by 2015, there were more hungry people in the developing countries today - 820 million - than there were in 1996.... The report listed a series of steps which, it said, was needed to eradicate hunger in the years ahead. They included: focussing programmes and investments on "hotspots" of poverty and undernourishment; enhancing the productivity of smallholder agriculture; creating the right conditions for private investment, including transparency and good governance; making world trade work for the poor, with safety nets put in place for vulnerable groups; and a rapid increase in the level of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to 0.7 percent of GDP, as promised." More

"In a week marking both World Poverty Eradication Day and World Food Day, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called for simultaneous action on both issues, warning that it will be impossible to eradicate one blight without the other.

"Hunger and poverty are ugly siblings. You cannot get rid of either unless you tackle the other as well... Hunger, after all, is both a source and a consequence of extreme poverty. A hungry man cannot think beyond his next meal... This has devastating consequences for the economic and social development of society as a whole," Mr. Annan told government representatives and other officials at UN Headquarters." More

"The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations celebrates World Food Day each year on 16 October, the day on which the Organization was founded in 1945. The World Food Day and TeleFood theme for 2006 is "Investing in agriculture for food security".

Agriculture may have become a minor player in many industrialized economies, but it must play a starring role on the world stage if we are to bring down the curtain on hunger.

Yet foreign aid for agriculture and rural development has continued to decline. From a total of over US$9 billion per year in the early 1980s, it fell to less than US$5 billion in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, an estimated 854 million people around the world remain undernourished." More

NYT: "The United Nations warned nearly 90 countries including the United States and most of Europe on Thursday to prepare for more deaths from heroin overdoses because of surging opium production in Afghanistan. The 2006 Afghan Opium Survey, published by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, found production of the raw material for heroin hit a record 6,100 tonnes, almost 50 percent higher than last year. This accounted for more than 90 percent of the world's supply."

AP: "A new study finds that very few survivors of Hurricane Katrina contemplated suicide despite the extreme conditions they faced.

While the survivors suffered twice as much mental illness as the pre-storm population, they contemplated suicide far less often than mentally ill people surveyed before Katrina.

The study, led by Ronald Kessler of Harvard University, found only one percent of these troubled survivors either thought about or planned for suicide. Before Katrina, eight percent of mentally ill people from the same region had such thoughts and four percent made plans to carry out suicide. Researchers credit a surprisingly powerful inner strength.

The study results are reported in the online Bulletin of the World Health Organization and in a paper to the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study."

View WHO report (pdf)

"WHO and health partners are supporting the national authorities in meeting the urgent needs of the rapidly increasing number of displaced people, including access to safe drinking water, health care, vaccines and life saving medications. Collaboration with other health agencies such as UNICEF, UNFPA, the Lebanese Red Cross and others is instituted through the Health Cluster mechanism, and the UN Flash Appeal launched on 24 July. Eighteen health projects are listed under the Flash Appeal, for a total requirement of US$ 32 428 200. Pledges thus far include US$ 1 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), US$ 381 000 from Australia, 200 000 Euros from Italy, 100 000 Euros from Ireland, US$ 600 000 from Sweden, US$ 660 000 from Canada, 1 000 000 Euros from Norway and 500 000 Euros from ECHO."

"A World Health Organization investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated slightly in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts insisted Friday it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic." [More]

"On the final day of a special session on the fight against H.I.V. and AIDS, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered a gloomy assessment, saying the world was losing the battle.

"The epidemic continues to outpace us," he told a jam-packed session of the General Assembly today. "There are more new infections than ever before; more deaths than ever before; more women and girls infected than ever before."

Mr. Annan, who is from Ghana and has made fighting H.I.V. a priority of his tenure, acknowledged some areas of progress since the last U.N. special session on AIDS in 2001: seven times as many people around the world now have access to treatment, he said, and in some African nations, the rate of infection is declining.

But he said that if countries "don't step up the fight drastically," the world would not be able to "reverse the tide." He called the spread of the disease "the single greatest reversal in the history of human development." [More]

NYT: "Stopping the epidemic of AIDS will require $22 billion a year by 2008 and possibly more in the following years, officials of the United Nations AIDS program said Wednesday. The $22 billion is nearly triple the $8.3 billion spent last year by all sources, including governments and the private sector.

Urging that countries spend more, Secretary General Kofi Annan said a costlier and more sustained effort was needed because AIDS "has spread further, faster and with more catastrophic long-term effects than any other disease."

"It took the world far too long to wake up" to a pandemic that has infected more than 60 million people, of whom more than 25 million have died, Mr. Annan said."

AP: "The world continues to lose an ugly battle to HIV/AIDS that shows no sign of letting up after 25 million people have died a quarter-century into the epidemic, the head of the U.N.'s HIV/AIDS joint program said.

"I think we will see a further globalization of the epidemic spreading to every single corner of the planet," UNAIDS head Peter Piot told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Geneva.

UNAIDS on Tuesday was scheduled to launch a 630-page report that takes stock of where the world currently stands with nearly 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS. It documents countries' progress and failures, and projects what must happen to keep some regions from experiencing disaster. The report was set to be released a day ahead of a High Level Meeting on AIDS in New York, a week prior to the 25th anniversary of the first documented AIDS cases on June 5, 1981."

"An Indonesian who died of bird flu after nursing his sick son might have caught the virus in a case of direct human-to-human transmission, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today.

WHO gave its first details of the case of a family cluster of H5N1 avian influenza infections in which six people have now died, and today said it was still looking for the source of the outbreak.

If it was a case of human-to-human transmission, the virus had not spread very far, it emphasised.

It would not be the first case of human-to-human transmission.

WHO said some limited human-to-human transmission occurred before in other countries, but as in the Indonesian case, it did not last long." [More]

"The real issue is absenteeism, which the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts could climb above 40% and last for weeks. Boeing is trying to determine if it can operate with 30% of its 160,000 employees out.

"We usually don't share specifics, because it's a security issue," says Boeing spokeswoman Kelly Donaghy. "Can you plan for everything? Absolutely not. We're going to be prepared the best we can. Shame on us if we don't at least think about it ahead of time." [Read more]

See also:

WHO: Avian Influenza

Study: U.S. Couldn't Slow Flu Pandemic

UN News: "Arriving today in Kenya, where 3.5 million people need emergency assistance, a United Nations Special Humanitarian Envoy warned that the crisis could deepen as families exhaust their remaining resources.

Kjell Magne Bondevik made his comments in Nairobi as he continued his tour of drought-affected countries in the Horn of Africa.

Food insecurity in Kenya remains severe in pastoral areas where the majority of those most affected are living, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In Mandera district in the north, acute malnutrition in children has been recorded and high losses of livestock reported."

"More than 1,000 Iraqis who live south of Baghdad within the bombed and looted complex that was once the centre of Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme are at acute risk of radioactive poisoning, the UN's nuclear authority said yesterday.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said it was launching a clean-up operation at the Tuwaitha plant, 14 miles south of Baghdad, and appealed for international involvement in what it said would be a long-term challenge." [Full story]

"A quarter century into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, researchers fear that a lack of preparedness for large-scale social changes, driven by factors like armed conflict and climate change, could lead to explosive new outbreaks affecting millions of people.

Since cases of a severe pneumonia affecting gay men were described for the first time in a U.S. public health report in June 1981, more than 65 million people have become infected with HIV and 25 million have died, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which estimates the current number of people living with HIV at 37 to 45 million.

"We should not accept living with this epidemic at the level it has reached," Paul DeLay, director of monitoring and evaluation at UNAIDS, told IPS. "Today, we have a much clearer understanding of the epidemic itself and what we need to do."

Pointing to the most important advances of the last 25 years, DeLay said the real breakthrough from the standpoint of science has been cheaper, simpler treatment and diagnosis, and drugs that prevent mother-to-child transmission.

While he believes that it is unrealistic to think in terms of eradicating the epidemic right now, "What we instead have to do is use all of the tools we have to get it under control and reduce it as much as possible," he said. "We have to fight the fight."

But according to researcher Samuel R. Friedman, "We are not really looking ahead to what may be coming down the road at us." [Link]

"With at least 10 million people dying each year from largely preventable infectious diseases and complications of pregnancy and delivery, the United Nations today marked World Health Day with an urgent call for more than 4 million additional doctors, nurses, midwives, managers and public health workers for developing countries.

"The global population is growing, but the number of health workers is stagnating or even falling in many of the places where they are needed most," UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Lee Jong-wook said of the stark statistics detailed in his agency's World Health Report 2006 - Working Together for Health, issued today.

"Across the developing world, health workers face economic hardship, deteriorating infrastructure and social unrest. In many countries, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has also destroyed the health and lives of health workers," he added, noting that the report sets out a 10-year plan to address the crisis." [Read more]

See also:

UN: Shortage of Health Workers Puts World at Risk

World Health Day Puts Spotlight on Health Workforce;
AAHC Warns National And Global Crises Must Be Addressed

"Dr. David Nabarro, chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, has become gun-shy about making predictions - in particular about if and when the A(H5N1) virus, now devastating bird populations around the world, will do the same to humans.

But Dr. Nabarro describes himself as "quite scared," especially since the disease has broken out of Asia and reached birds in Africa, Europe and India much faster than he expected it to. "That rampant, explosive spread," he said, "and the dramatic way it's killing poultry so rapidly suggests that we've got a very beastly virus in our midst." [Read more]

WHO: Affected countries with confirmed
human cases of H5N1 avian influenza
since 2003

"With wild birds spreading the avian flu virus further into Africa and Europe, the United Nations system was stepping up assistance to countries in their efforts to contain the virus in birds and conducting simulation exercises to prepare strategies for quick action on a human future pandemic, the official in charge of the effort said today.

"Frankly, there will be a pandemic, sooner or later," Dr. David Nabarro, the UN System's Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza told correspondents at UN Headquarters in New York as he updated them on developments since his mission to China in mid-January. "It might be due to H5N1 or to some other influenza virus and it could start any time," he said. "We have to behave as though this could start any time, because if we don't, we will put off getting prepared." [Read more]

Also see:

Bird Flu Could Reach Americas in 6 Months

UN Officials Rehearse Plans for Bird Flu Pandemic

World Health Organization: Avian influenza complete coverage

Bloomberg: "The United Nations World Health Organization said as much as $1.5 billion is needed during the next three years to combat the spread of avian influenza which has killed almost 80 people since December 2003."

"The rise of deadly new diseases such as SARS and bird flu could be linked to the destruction of the environment, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

"Human health is strongly linked to the health of ecosystems, which meet many of our most critical needs," Maria Neira, director of WHO's Department of Protection of the Human Environment told a news conference at the launch of a new report.

"As a result of human actions, the structure and the world's ecosystems changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century than at any other time in human history," the report said." [Read more]

Full Report

BBC: "HIV impact: Region-by-region - As World Aids Day is marked around the globe, virtually no part of the world has remained untouched by HIV."

UPDATE: Bloggers covering World AIDS Day 2005

Birmingham Blues

Comments from Left Field

Gay Patriot

Mohawk Blogger

Political Cabaret

This is Zimbabwe

"Almost 5 million people were infected by HIV globally in 2005, the highest jump since the first reported case in 1981 and taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, the United Nations said on Monday.

The 4.9 million new infections were fueled by the epidemic's continuing rampage in sub-Saharan Africa and a spike in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the UNAIDS body said in its annual report.

"Despite progress made in a small but growing number of countries, the AIDS epidemic continues to outstrip global efforts to contain it," the report said." [Full article]

"Confronting the possibility of a potentially devastating human bird flu pandemic, the United Nations system - from Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to the UN health and agricultural agencies - laid out a blueprint for immediate preventive and mitigating action.

At the same time, a senior UN health expert said no one can predict the risk of a possible mutation of the virus into a pandemic, nor its potential death toll, which some estimates have put in the scores of millions. "The risk is there, it's a true risk, but it can't be quantified," UN World Health Organization (WHO) official David Heymann said in New York. Declaring that merely stockpiling antiviral medicines does not constitute a strategy, Mr. Annan highlighted seven priorities to combat the threat of the H5N1 virus." [Read more]

"Russia confirmed more bird flu cases on Monday, raising fears it could spread over Europe, but a U.N. official said the best way to stop it was for donors to pay up and fight it where it began, among Asian fowl.

The U.N. food agency's head said the world must focus on Asia, and on stopping the virus passing between birds, as the best way to prevent the nightmare scenario of it mixing with a human strain to cause pandemic deadly flu." [Full article]

"Marking World Food Day [October 16th], 150 countries celebrated the contributions of different cultures to creating modern agriculture and diet, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said.

In his message on the occasion, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for partnerships to reach the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and extreme poverty. [More]

"Facing dire warnings of an impending global pandemic of avian influenza, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today announced the appointment of a United Nations system coordinator for the virus, which is presently decimating poultry stocks in Asia and could cross over to humans to deadly effect.

"We expect the next great influenza pandemic to come at any time now," David Nabarro, a senior public health expert in the UN World Health Organization (WHO), told a news briefing, recalling that the 1918 flu pandemic had killed over 40 million people." [Full story]

Duck farm in Thailand with newly installed net to keep ducks
and wild birds apart, a measure against spread of the avian
flu virus.

"The deadly strain of bird flu that has hit several countries in Asia is likely to be carried over long distances along the flyways of wild water birds to the Middle East, Europe, South Asia and Africa, with the potential to trigger a global human pandemic, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.

"Avian influenza is an international problem that definitely needs a strong international response," FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech told a news conference at the agency's headquarters in Rome." [Read more]

"Most poor countries will miss global targets to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and reverse the toll of AIDS and other diseases by 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday.

None of the poorest regions of the developing world is on track to meet the target of reducing by two-thirds the rate of child mortality, now around 11 million deaths each year, in the next decade, according to the United Nations agency." [More]

"The devastating tsunami that struck Asia last year has left several countries that were already vulnerable to AIDS at even greater risk of the deadly disease, United Nations officials said on Monday.

One in four new infections occurs in Asia, home to more than half the world's people, and 1,500 in the region die from the disease each day. Another 12 million could be infected over the next five years if prevention programmes are not stepped up." [Full Story]

"One in three Africans suffers from malnutrition and a total of 852 million people in the world suffer from hunger, the United Nations says in a new report.

The World Food Program (WFP) report highlighted the plight of starving Africans and said that the financial contributions necessary for alleviating the continent's hunger problems were lacking." [More]

On a related note, Live 8 has kicked off. Read what bloggers are saying about it.

"The negative impacts of the illicit drug trade touch every society in the world. This year's World Drug Report estimates that 200 million people, or 5% of the global population age 15-64, have consumed illicit drugs at least once in the last 12 months. The drug trade is pernicious and large. UNODC estimates its retail value at US$ 321bn. It impacts almost every level of human security from individual health, to safety and social welfare. Its consequences are especially devastating for countries with limited resources available to fight against it.

The World Drug Report 2005 provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of illicit drug trends at the international level."

UN News Service: "On "World No Tobacco Day", the UN World Health Organization (WHO) is urging health professionals to be more proactive in minimizing the problems caused by tobacco addiction, consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke.

"Tobacco continues to be a leading global killer, with nearly five million deaths a year", notes Dr Lee Jong-wook, WHO Director-General, and "Health professionals are on the frontline. They need the skills to help people stop smoking, and they need to lead by example, and quit tobacco use themselves."

UN News Service: "Four Central Asian countries which have suffered a dramatic increase in HIV infection rates in recent years today launched a nearly $27 million project to lessen the human and economic impact of the pandemic ... At a project launch workshop, whose organizers included the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Bank, representatives of the four countries signed agreements for a $25 million grant from the Bank's International Development Association (IDA) and a 1 million pound sterling grant from the Department for International Development (DfID) in the United Kingdom."

"The United Nations Commission on Population and Development has called on the international community to assist developing countries in fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic by scaling up development aid.

In a unanimously adopted resolution at the end of its thirty-eighth session yesterday, the Commission urged "the international community to complement and supplement, through increased international development assistance, efforts of the developing countries that commit increased national funds to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic."

It drew particular attention to the problematic situation "in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean, countries at high risk of expansion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and countries in other affected regions whose resources for dealing with the epidemic are seriously limited."

The Commission stressed that HIV/AIDS has been intensifying poverty in many countries, affecting individuals, families and communities, reducing human capital and having profound and long-lasting effects on a country's social and economic development." Full Story

"The emergence of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of coastal "dead zones," the collapse of fisheries and shifts in regional climate are just some of the potential consequences of humankind's degradation of the planet's ecosystems, according to a new United Nations-backed report launched today.

Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the last 50 years than in any other period; some 60 per cent of ecosystem elements supporting life on Earth, such as fresh water, clean air or a relatively stable climate, are being degraded or used unsustainably; and the situation could become significantly worse during the first half of this century, according to the study."

Read the rest...

"A senior United Nations bird flu expert has gone to North Korea to try to prevent the spread of the virus.

North Korea confirmed on Saturday that bird flu had been detected in several farms near the capital, Pyongyang.

State media said hundreds of thousands of chickens had been destroyed to prevent the virus from spreading, and no humans had been affected.

The UN has also sent diagnostic kits to help the North Koreans determine if the birds died from the deadly H5N1 strain." Full Story

United Nations Marks World Water Day

"The United Nations says more than 1.1 billion people around the world lack safe water and 2.4 billion have no access to sanitation, leading to over 3 million deaths every year.

"People who can turn on a tap and have safe and clean water to drink, to cook with and to bathe in often take it for granted, and yet more than 1 billion of our fellow human beings have little choice but to use potentially harmful sources of water," said Dr. Lee Jong-Wook, head of the World Health Organization." Read More

"Social determinants are the conditions in which people live and work. They are the "causes behind the causes" of ill-health. They include poverty, social exclusion, inappropriate housing, shortcomings in safeguarding early childhood development, unsafe employment conditions, and lack of quality health systems.

Social determinants are intrinsically linked to inequities in health. They help to explain why poor and marginalized people get sick and die sooner than people in better social positions. They are a significant reason behind the world's vast difference in average life expectancy, which ranges from 34 years in Sierra Leone (lowest in the world) to 81.9 in Japan (highest in the world)." More from the WHO...

Good news in today's NYT: "The world should be able to meet a goal of reducing by half the number of measles deaths by the end of the year, two United Nations agencies said today.

The number of deaths from the highly contagious viral disease has dropped by 39 percent, to about 530,000 in 2003 from 873,000 in 1999, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund said in a joint report."

Drudge links to this Financial Times piece: "The world is poorly prepared for a future influenza pandemic, with only a dozen countries purchasing significant quantities of antiviral drugs and just 50 with contingency plans on how to cope with such an outbreak. A Financial Times analysis on the eve of a World Health Organisation meeting on preparing for a pandemic shows widely differing approaches between countries that already have plans, and a sharp divide between richer countries and many poorer nations, creating splits that could hinder efforts to curb disease."

Great item on the WHO website: "In the lead up to World Health Day on 7 April this year, six mothers living in different countries of the world are sharing their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. In this fourth part of Great expectations, the babies are one week old. They have reached a significant milestone in their lives, as the risk of death in the first seven days is higher than at any point in the first five years of a child's life." Read More...

From ABC News (via UN Wire): "David Nabarro, the WHO's top health crisis official, said health officials' success at combating disease had exceeded his expectations, after the U.N. body had warned of possible mosquito-and water-borne epidemics in the region, which is in the grip of the rainy season."