Humanitarian aid

Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 80 countries. In countries where health structures are insufficient or even non-existant, MSF collaborates with authorities such as the Ministry of Health to provide assistance. MSF works in rehabilitation of hospitals and dispensaries, vaccination programmes and water and sanitation projects. MSF also works in remote health care centres, slum areas and provides training of local personnel.

Many people believe that modern medicine is continuing to significantly improve global health. Polio has been nearly eradicated, smallpox eliminated, and it will only be a matter of time before cures for all other diseases are found. However, this confidence is misplaced and based more on history than reality. Today, one- third of the world’s population lacks access to essential medicines; in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia this figure rises to one-half.

IRIN is a non-commercial venture, but totally dependent on financing from donor governments and/or institutions. Governments, aid workers, disaster specialists, members of the public receive regular reports on a wide array of political, economic and social issues affecting humanitarian efforts. Though essentially serving these groups, IRIN takes an increasingly broad view of what comprises humanitarianism and seeks to cover the full range of humanitarian issues from the abuse of human rights to the environment.

The measure of devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS may be impossible to quantify in human and financial terms but, using tools such as the Household Vulnerability Index, it is possible to begin measuring the effects of the epidemic on households and communities. Developed by the Food, Agriculture and Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), the computerised tool is a statistical method measuring a households vulnerability to the ravages of HIV/AIDS, especially on agriculture and food security. The index investigates ways in which a family may be affected.

Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year and the world has fallen far short in efforts to reduce hunger by half before 2015, the U.N. Children's Fund said Tuesday.

It has long been known that malnutrition undermines economic growth and perpetuates poverty. Yet the international community and most governments in developing countries have failed to tackle malnutrition over the past decades, even though well-tested approaches for doing so exist. The consequences of this failure to act are now evident in the world's inadequate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and toward poverty reduction more generally.

Development projects designed to improve maternal and child welfare in Africa may incur unexpected costs associated with increases in family size if they do not include a component of family planning, according to new research from the University of Bristol.

ROME, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Each day, millions of people worldwide continue to be hungry and malnourished, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has said in its annual hunger report.