Ebola and Marburg Vaccines Protect Monkeys, Maybe Also People

Medical researchers have developed vaccines that appear to protect monkeys from the Ebola and Marburg viruses. The researchers say a single injection proved one hundred percent effective.
Scientists from the Public Health Agency of Canada developed the vaccines. They had assistance from researchers at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. The study appeared in Nature Medicine.

The researchers say the study with twelve macaque monkeys suggests that the vaccines might also be able to protect people. Ebola and Marburg are always deadly to monkeys and other non-human primates. In humans, the viruses can kill eighty to ninety percent of those who become infected.

A recent outbreak of Marburg in Angola has killed more then three hundred fifty people. Vaccines could help prevent outbreaks. They could also be used in case of biological terrorism.

The researchers took one gene from the Ebola or Marburg virus and placed it into another virus to use in the experimental vaccines. They say the vaccine itself cannot cause disease. But it does cause the body to react in a way that would protect people if they ever really became infected with Ebola or Marburg.

Ebola and Marburg are spread through bodily fluids. Both diseases cause high temperatures, organ failure and severe bleeding. There are no cures.

Both viruses spread from time to time in central Africa. Scientists recorded the first Ebola outbreak in nineteen seventy-six in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Laboratories in Europe first recognized Marburg virus in monkeys in nineteen sixty-seven.

The vaccines must go through several years of testing before they can be approved for human use.
If so, they could be included one day in a program to vaccinate millions of people against deadly diseases. Members of the World Health Organization approved a Global Immunization Strategy at a meeting in Geneva in May. The aim is to expand vaccination programs.

Vaccine-preventable diseases kill more than two million people per year, mostly children. One goal of the new policy is to reach at least eighty percent vaccination coverage in every area of a country by two thousand ten.

Calls for Change Mark 60th Anniversary of United Nations

The United Nations was created on June twenty-sixth, nineteen forty-five. Representatives from fifty countries signed charter documents in San Francisco, California. Four months later, the U.N. officially came to exist, after a majority of those countries approved the charter.

The United Nations Association of San Francisco organized events to mark the sixtieth anniversary. Organizers invited many former world leaders. They also invited President Bush or a high-level representative. The administration chose Sichan Siv, the American representative on the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

The anniversary comes as the United Nations faces calls for reforms. The organization is criticized for its supervision of the Iraq oil-for-food program, for sex crimes by U.N. peacekeepers and for other reasons.

On June twenty-second the United States proposed a reform plan to the U.N. General Assembly. The plan includes more seats for the Security Council. The United States says it supports "two or so" new permanent members, including Japan, and two or three more non-permanent seats.
Japan, Brazil, India and Germany have jointly proposed their own expansion plan. It would include them as permanent members, along with two African nations. China rejects a permanent seat for Japan.

Other reform proposals being discussed include replacing the U.N. human rights commission with a smaller council. It would exclude countries with poor human rights records.

In March, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan offered his own reform plan. He proposed expanding the Security Council and creating a new human rights council. His plan also includes ideas for defining terrorism, and new rules on when to use military force. World leaders are to consider the proposals in New York in September.

In Washington, Senate Democrats have delayed a vote on President Bush's nominee for U.N. ambassador. They say John Bolton is wrong for the job. He has strongly criticized the United Nations.
In the House of Representatives, lawmakers recently passed a Republican bill to pressure the United Nations. The bill calls for the United States to make only half its U.N. payments unless there are reforms by two thousand seven. The Bush administration opposes that bill.

Iron Sprinkles Seen as a Way to Aid Poor Children's Health

The World Health Organization says iron deficiency is the most common nutritional disorder in the world. The W.H.O. estimates that as many as eighty percent of people may not be getting enough iron in their diet. Iron deficiency and anemia are especially common among children in developing countries.

The body needs iron to manufacture hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to body tissues. The body also needs iron to produce several enzymes necessary for muscle, the brain and the body’s defenses to work correctly.

Iron is stored in bone marrow and two organs, the spleen and liver. Iron deficiency is the main cause of anemia. A person becomes anemic when iron levels are severely reduced.

Adults who do not get enough iron get tired more quickly. And there are special risks for pregnant women. But risks for children can be much more serious, especially in the first two years of life. Iron deficiency can harm physical and mental development.

Health experts say iron deficiency is the most common nutritional problem that is preventable. But foods with a lot of iron, such as meats, are often too costly for poor families. And many children do not like the taste of iron supplements.

A Canadian scientist, Doctor Stanley Zlotkin, says he has a solution. Iron and other minerals necessary for good health can be processed into very small particles. These sprinkles are covered with a neutral food product to hide the taste. Doctor Zlotkin says the mixture can be easily added to food and mixed together.

He says the sprinkles come in the amount needed to meet a child’s daily need for iron at a cost of three cents or less a day. There is also vitamin C, which helps the body process iron, and vitamin A, zinc, and folic acid.

Sprinkles are already in limited use. Doctor Zlotkin says his goal is to expand the use of sprinkles in the nutrition policy of all developing countries. Earlier this year, Doctor Zlotkin and other scientists reported on successful tests in West Africa. The Public Library of Science published the findings. Internet users can read the report free of charge at publiclibraryofscience -- all one word -- dot o-r-g.

U.S. Report Criticizes 14 Countries on Human Trafficking

For the fifth year, the State Department in Washington has released its Trafficking in Persons Report. The report rates the efforts of countries to fight modern-day slavery.

Fourteen countries get the lowest ratings this year. Among them are Bolivia, Burma, Cambodia, Cuba, Ecuador, Jamaica and Kuwait. The others are North Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Togo, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Congress requires the yearly report under a law called the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of Two Thousand. The reports are based on information from American diplomats as well as non-governmental organizations and other groups. One hundred fifty nations are examined in the report this year.

Countries are divided into three groups, or tiers. Tier One means that a country fully meets the requirements of the law. Tier Two countries do not meet the standards fully, but are working to improve. Guyana and Bangladesh are two nations this year that moved up to Tier Two.

Tier Three countries face possible restrictions in American aid or other measures. That could happen to the fourteen countries if they do not make changes by the end of September.

John Miller heads the anti-trafficking office at the State Department. Ambassador Miller says only a small number of countries have faced action. He says the goal of the report is not to punish, but to get nations to improve. The report says the United States provided ninety-six million dollars in foreign aid last year to deal with the problem.

In fact, Mister Miller said one country, Ecuador, has already taken steps since the report was put together. Lawmakers approved changes in Ecuador's criminal laws.

The United States is not rated in the study. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States is dealing with its own trafficking problem. Mister Miller estimates that each year almost fifteen thousand people are brought to the United States.

The report estimates that as many as eight hundred thousand people are trafficked across international borders each year. Millions of others are moved within countries. Trafficking victims are often forced into labor or the sex trade. Experts say about half of all victims are children. Many are sold by their own families.

Top Aid Official at U.N. Says World Is Failing Africa

The United Nations has made fourteen appeals for aid to Africa so far this year. Yet eight of those appeals have received less than twenty percent of the amount requested. And only one, a small appeal for Angola, has received more than forty percent.

These numbers are from the U.N. official who supervises emergency aid. Jan Egeland, from Norway, says that in general there is too little investment in the area of the world with the greatest need.

Mister Egeland spoke last week to reporters and the U.N. Security Council about the humanitarian crises in Africa. Later, the council released a statement of deep concern about the situation.

The U.N. appeals included a request for more than twenty-three million dollars for the Central African Republic. Only six percent of that has been received, and only eight percent of a requested one hundred sixty-four million dollars for Somalia.

Mister Egeland says too many people are dying because of too little money or because it arrives too late. And he says Africa has new crises faster than the U.N. can solve old ones. The recent political conflict in Togo, for example, has created thousands of refugees.

And Mister Egeland spoke of recent killings in northern Uganda by rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army. Almost two million people have been displaced by years of civil war in northern Uganda. Mister Egeland said more aid is needed to prevent a break in the food supply in June.

He warned about food shortages in several countries in southern Africa as well as Ethiopia and Eritrea in the east. The U.N. official spoke of the combined threat of AIDS, food shortages and weak government in Zimbabwe and other countries.

Also, he says promises of aid are not being met fast enough to help the refugees from Darfur, in western Sudan. About two hundred thousand people have entered Chad to escape two years of violence in Darfur.

Mister Egeland said there is "an inbuilt discrimination" against Africa. In his words: "If we all agree that a human life has the same value wherever he or she is born, there should be the same attention to northern Uganda as to northern Iraq, the same attention to the Congo as there was to Kosovo.
"And that," he added, "is not the case today."

'Paper Architect' Pens Creative Solutions for Refugee Housing

Shigeru Ban is called the "paper architect." Mister Ban is an architect in Tokyo known for his designs of temporary shelters made of paper. Many of his designs, such as the "Paper Log House," are built with used cardboard tubes.

Mister Ban designed such houses for people in Kobe, Japan, after the nineteen ninety-five earthquake there. He also designed a community gathering place. More recently, his paper houses provided shelter for people in Turkey and India after earthquakes hit those countries.

Shigeru Ban also has worked with the United Nations to create housing for refugees in Rwanda. And he has established a non-governmental organization called the Volunteer Architects’ Network. Members design buildings for free to help deal with housing shortages and poor living conditions around the world.

In April, the University of Virginia honored Mister Ban. He received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture. The school recognized him for his humanitarian efforts, environmental concerns and creative use of building materials.
Shigeru Ban does not just work with paper. He also works with bamboo, wood and other materials. His next project is in Sri Lanka. The plan is to build one hundred houses for people who lost their homes in the tsunami waves last December. The houses will be built with locally made blocks formed from earth.

Mister Ban does not just design houses. One of his works is a temporary space with walls formed from one hundred forty-eighty shipping containers. These steel containers are normally used to transport goods. Huge paper tubes support a roof over the structure.

Shigeru Ban designed the space as a museum for a traveling art show by New York photographer Gregory Colbert. Mister Colbert wanted an unusual place to show his collection of large pictures of animals interacting with humans and nature. The show is called "Ashes and Snow"; the structure is the Nomadic Museum.

The Nomadic Museum is at Pier fifty-four in New York City until June sixth. Next stop is the Santa Monica Pier in Southern California. As the show travels, the shipping containers for the walls will be found locally. Organizers say additional stops are planned in the United States, Europe and Asia.

New Head of U.N. Refugee Agency Chosen

Antonio Guterres, chosen as the new head of the United Nations refugee agency, is a former prime minister of Portugal. Mister Guterres served from nineteen ninety-six to two thousand two. He resigned after heavy losses by his Socialist Party in local elections.

Since nineteen ninety-nine, Mister Guterres has been president of the Socialist International. That is an organization of one hundred sixty-six social democratic, socialist and labor parties around the world. Since two thousand three, Mister Guterres has also advised the board of directors of one of the largest banks in Portugal.

Last week, Secretary General Kofi Annan nominated him to become the tenth U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Approval is required by the General Assembly in New York. Mister Guterres is to begin a three-year term on June fifteenth.

Antonio Guterres is fifty-six years old. He served in the Portuguese parliament from nineteen seventy-six to nineteen eighty-three. Two years later he returned to parliament and served for ten more years. During that time he started the Portuguese Refugee Council.

Former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers resigned in February as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Several women had accused him of sexual harassment. Mister Lubbers denied any wrongdoing. In his resignation letter, he said he had felt insulted by the way he was treated. He suggested that media pressure on Mister Annan had played a part.

Wendy Chamberlin has been the acting head of the U.N. refugee agency. She calls Mister Guterres a "highly respected international statesman with a wealth of experience."

The agency is called the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or U.N.H.C.R. The General Assembly passed a resolution in December of nineteen fifty to establish the office.

The main purpose is to protect the rights and security of refugees. Today, U.N. officials estimate that there are seventeen million refugees and others of concern to the agency, such as asylum seekers.

The U.N.H.C.R. has six thousand employees in one hundred fifteen countries. The agency has won two Nobel Peace Prizes. And it estimates it has helped more than fifty million people.

Report: Sweden Is the Best Place for Mothers

Sunday was Mother’s Day in the United States. People are supposed to do something special to honor their mom.

But a yearly list of the best and worst places to be a mother and child rates the United States eleventh, behind Britain. Scandinavian countries are at the top. Sweden is number one. Denmark is second. Finland is third.

Save the Children, an American-based humanitarian organization, compared conditions in one hundred ten countries. The report came out last week.

At the bottom of the list, Mali and Burkina Faso share last place. Just above them are Ethiopia, Chad, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mauritania. Gambia and Eritrea are also in the bottom ten, along with two Asian countries: Nepal and Cambodia. Cambodia is tied with Eritrea in one hundredth place.

Save the Children based its report on six conditions related to the health and security of women. These include the risk of early death, and the rate of use of modern birth-control methods. Another measure was the percentage of births with the aid of trained medical workers. Still another was the percentage of pregnant women with a shortage of iron in the blood.

The study also examined reading levels among women and the involvement of women in national government. Four other conditions related to the health and education of children.

Save the Children has published a report on the "State of the World's Mothers" for six years now. This year the group included a progress report on education for girls. Researchers examined progress made over the past ten years in seventy-one developing countries.

The report says Bolivia, Kenya, Cameroon and Bangladesh have made the most progress in girls' education. Listed at the bottom are Rwanda, Iraq, Malawi and Eritrea. Worldwide, the report says, fifty-eight million girls are out of school.

Charles MacCormack is head of Save the Children. He says many children in the world are lucky just to survive the first five years of life. But Mister MacCormack calls the situation far from hopeless. He notes that world leaders have agreed on eight goals to reduce poverty, save lives and increase security by two thousand fifteen.

World Bank Announces Plan to Improve Anti-Malaria Efforts

The World Bank has announced a new plan to help fight malaria. The international lender says the fight against the disease has been too slow and uneven.

The goal is to expand access to anti-malarial drugs and preventions such as bed nets treated with chemicals that kill mosquitoes. Those insects spread the organism that causes an estimated five hundred million cases of malaria each year. Most are in southern Africa. The disease is getting more difficult to fight as the organism develops resistance to traditional treatments.

The new Global Strategy and Booster Program announced by the World Bank will include a special committee. Its job will be to make sure that anti-malaria efforts are part of lending programs.

World Bank officials estimate that five hundred million to one thousand million dollars in spending is possible over the next five years. The announcement took place on April twenty-fourth, Africa Malaria Day.

The World Health Organization says malaria kills more than one million people a year. Most of the victims are children under the age of five. Pregnant women are also at greater risk from the disease.

Africa pays a huge economic price for malaria. The W.H.O says the disease costs Africa about twelve thousand million dollars a year in lost productivity. The health agency says malaria has slowed development on the continent.

The new program announced by the World Bank also will increase help to other areas affected by malaria. Southeast Asia has the second highest death rate from the disease. About eight percent of malaria deaths happen in that part of the world.

Jean-Louis Sarbib is a top official at the World Bank. He calls the new plan "good for reducing human suffering and good for economic growth." When adults get sick, they have to stop working. Mister Sarbib points out that when children and teachers become infected, education also suffers as a result of malaria.

World Bank officials say they are building on lessons learned from malaria control programs in Brazil, Eritrea, India and Vietnam. Mister Sarbib says much progress has been in some places, but efforts have been slower and more limited than expected.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals aim to reduce deaths among children and pregnant women. Malaria control is one way to do that.

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