ICDDR,B is spreading its technical know-how to African countries to help them overcome tropical diseases.
Two doctors of the organization who are also experts in cholera management, returned home on Wednrsday after a two-week visit to the Horn of African countries-including Somalia and Kenya.
They trained more than 50 health professionals there including doctors and nurses, in cholera case management.

Two ICDDR,B doctors, also experts in cholera management, returned home Wednesday after a two-week visit to the Horn of African countries —Somalia and Kenya — where they trained more than 50 health professionals, including doctors and nurses, in cholera case management.
Heavy rainfall caused increased fears of a wide- scale cholera outbreak in an already volatile region marred by warfare and subsequent breakdown in basic infrastructure and services.

Five countries in southern Africa have joined forces to launch a research centre that will work on combating climate change in the region. South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Namibia signed a declaration on Wednesday to base the initiative in the Namibian capital Windhoek.

The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (Sasscal) is intended to support cross-border research and land management.

Haiti is all set to start vaccinating one lakh people with an oral cholera vaccine “Sahchol” developed by the Hyderabad-based Shantha Biotechnics. According to a news report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the first phase of the campaign will be targeting 50,000 people living in Port-au-Prince and will be followed by a further 50,000 in the Artibonite River valley. The vaccination programme became possible with the Haiti's National Ethics Committee approving the oral cholera vaccine.

The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), in its quarterly report, has revealed that arsenic was present in seven brands of bottled water, which could cause cancer (of lungs, bladder, skin, prostrate, kidney, nose and liver), diabetes, kidney diseases, hypertension, heart diseases, birth defects and black-foot disease.

Besides this, sodium was present in five brands of bottled water, potassium in one and bacteriological contamination in three brands of bottled water.

A year and a half after cholera first struck Haiti, a tiny portion of the population on Thursday began getting vaccinated against the waterborne disease that has infected more than 530,000 Haitians and killed more than 7,040.

Organizers of the vaccination campaign, who have been pushing to do this since the epidemic began, cleared their final political hurdle this week when a national bioethics committee approved their plan to use all available doses of the cheapest cholera vaccine to immunize about 1 percent of the population.

In the wake of growing urbanisation, children living in cities have been prone to more risks than ever before, according to a UNICEF report.

“Urbanisation leaves hundreds of millions of children in cities and towns excluded from vital services,” said the report titled ‘States of the World‘s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World’ released today in the Capital. UNICEF representative Hana Singer and National Planning Commission Vice-chairman Deependra Bahadur Kshetry jointly launched the report.

Authorities have detected germs that cause diseases like diarrhoea and cholera in drinking water samples collected from rural and city areas in Banke district.

Microbiologist Khagendra KC of the National Public Health Laboratory said they found the germs in water collected from tubewells and water pipelines. The laboratory said the germs were detected in 12 of the samples collected from 20 areas. The samples were sent for testing on November 5 to 8.

“Water in the (12) areas is not suitable for drinking,” KC said.