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THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE is a partnership between The Rockefeller Foundation, UNICEF, USAID, The CHANGE Project, WHO, BBC World Service, CIDA, Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs, The European Union, Soul City, The Panos Institute, UNAIDS. It includes information, ideas, linkages and dialogue on communication, development and change (including some coverage of health and development).

Health experts have warned that South Africa's chances of meeting United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to child mortality are becoming increasingly slim.

Sixty-two per cent of Africans do not have access to an improved sanitation facility -- a proper toilet -- which separates human waste from human contact, according to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation.

Plus News has launched a new radio page delivering high-quality audio feature programmes that give a voice to people and communities on the frontline of the AIDS pandemic. The ready-to-broadcast MP3 audio files are free to download. They bear witness to the impact of HIV in southern Africa, particularly on the region's most vulnerable people: its children and women.

Mozambique, 18 February 2007 UNICEF Health Officer Dr. Felix Ramos is no novice to floods disasters. He was here in 2001, the year when severe floods devastated the central region of Mozambique, leaving thousands of people homeless. And now, he is among the first UNICEF staff to be deployed to the flood-affected areas to respond to the current emergency.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Children are likely to be undernourished in households where women are denied a voice in family decisions like doctor visits, food expenditures and trips to see friends and relatives, says a report by the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF, released on Monday.

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.

Food and agricultural experts say more than half a million Mozambicans face shortages unless an estimated 70,000 mt of emergency relief aid is secured.

A resounding silence surrounds an event to take place at the end of this month that, in theory at least, has great significance for the health of the people of Africa. Dr Ebrahim Samba is to step down after serving his maximum two terms of office as Director of WHO's Africa Region (WHO/AFRO). A new leader for WHO's governing body in the African region must therefore be nominated when the Regional Committee meets in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, between Aug 31 and Sept 3.

The Japanese government yesterday donated US1 million to Unicef Zimbabwe towards its HIV/Aids