Latest Millennium Development Goals Stories

NEW YORK, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- WaterAid welcomes the news that the world has met its goal to halve the proportion of people without safe drinking water by 2015. The international non-profit organization has called for a renewed effort to reach the 780 million people still waiting for water. New figures from the WHO / UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program Report 2012 (http://www.wssinfo.org) were released today and reveal that between 1990 and 2010 over two billion...

As disease expands global reach, Infectious Disease Research Institute teams up with India to target most deadly form of leishmaniasis SEATTLE, Feb. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The first clinical trial of a new vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) has been launched by the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), a Seattle-based nonprofit that develops products to prevent, detect, and treat diseases of poverty. The Phase 1 trial is taking place in Washington State,...

-The costs of environmental impacts of business operations are doubling every 14 years. -Companies should expect increases in external environmental costs which today are often not shown on financial statements. -Businesses and policymakers must take joint strategic decisions and act now. NEW YORK, Feb. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New research from KPMG International has identified 10 "megaforces" that will significantly affect corporate growth globally over the next two...

Researchers at the University of Dundee have identified fexinidazole as a possible, much-needed, new treatment for the parasitic disease visceral leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is named after William Leishman, a Glasgwegian doctor serving with the British Army in India, who first identified the parasite in the early 1900s. The disease is the second biggest killer in Africa, Asia and Latin America after malaria, and affects 500,000 people, killing about 50-60,000 patients per year. Current...

Access to sanitation facilities, such as latrines, reduces by half the risk of becoming infected by parasitic worms that are transmitted via soil (soil-transmitted helminths) according to a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine. These findings are important as infection with parasitic worms can cause diarrhea, weakness, and malnutrition, which in turn can impair physical and mental development in children; they reinforce the importance of increased access to sanitation (a Millennium...

Atmospheric methane (CH4), one of the main greenhouse gases, has increased dramatically worldwide since the pre-industrial era. However, much work is needed to build on intermittent and scattered observations since the 1960s and systematic study since the 1980s. Since 1983, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has coordinated global in-situ measurement of methane. Quantification of methane emissions still has large uncertainties, mainly because of undersampling over most regions of the...

KIT Climate Researchers Studied Ozone Hole Formation - Results in “Geophysical Research Letters“ Extraordinarily cold temperatures in the winter of 2010/2011 caused the most massive destruction of the ozone layer above the Arctic so far: The mechanisms leading to the first ozone hole above the North Pole were studied by scientists of the KIT Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK). According to these studies, further cooling of the ozone layer may enhance the influence of...

Scientists have shown that a new molecule in the earth’s atmosphere has the potential to play a significant role in off-setting global warming by cooling the planet. In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals. These invisible chemical intermediates are powerful oxidisers of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide...

The END7 Campaign is dedicated to building awareness of diseases that infect more than one billion people worldwide WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Launched today, the END7 campaign is dedicated to eliminating seven major neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) as a public health threat to poor communities by the end of 2020. NTDs infect one in six people worldwide, including 500 million children, and carry a higher health burden than malaria and...

Many of the particles in the atmosphere are produced by the natural world, and it is possible that plants have in recent decades reduced the effects of the greenhouse gases to which human activity has given rise. One consequence of this is that the climate may be more sensitive to emissions caused by human activity than we have previously believed. Scientists at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) have collected new data that may lead to better climate models. "Emissions by plants to the...