World Health

"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.