Global

Pilanesburg National Park, three hours from Johannesburg in South Africa, has been ravaged by drought. Zebras roam the game reserve on November 12, 2015.  PHOTOGRAPH BY WENDY KOCH, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The UN meeting will focus on developed countries’ plans to curb global warming, but it could give Africa money to embrace clean energy.

nationalgeographic.com - by Wendy Koch - November 23, 2015

A landmark UN report says rising temperatures will “amplify existing stress on water availability” in Africa—a continent that’s contributed little to climate change but is reeling from its impacts. . . .

. . . Countries have pledged to cut their planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases. Richer nations have also pledged $100 billion a year to help poorer ones adapt to climate change and adopt clean sources of energy.

“Africa could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of COP21,” UN’s Vincent Kitio said at National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge forum this month in Johannesburg on sub-Saharan Africa’s future.

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newirin.irinnews.org - 2 November 2015

The Boko Haram insurgency has claimed more than 25,000 lives in the past six years.

Since 2014, it has escalated and splintered across a wider swathe of West and Central Africa, uprooting millions of people in the process. Where should they go? This special feature examines the options and explores what the future holds. . . .

. . . Millions of Nigerians have fled Boko Haram, but the violence follows them.

Scores of people have been killed in the last few weeks in a string of suicide bombings in the main northeastern cities where they seek refuge. Border areas where refugees flee in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger are increasingly under attack. So pervasive is the insurgency, it is even starting to strike the displacement camps where the most desperate seek help.

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Members of the Bring Back Our Girls group campaigning for the release of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamists march to meet with the Nigerian president in Abuja, on July 8, 2015. Members of the BringBackOurGirls campaign group marched on July 8 to meet President Mohammadu Buhari to pressure him to end the deadly Boko Haram insurgency and free 219 schoolgirls held by the group since April 2014.  PHILIP OJISUA VIA GETTY IMAGES

UNICEF has been able to reach 67,000 students by setting up temporary learning spaces and renovating and expanding schools.

huffingtonpost.com - by Eleanor Goldberg - December 22, 2015

As Boko Haram continues to wage targeted attacks against civilians in northeastern Nigeria and its neighboring countries, more than 1 million children have been forced out of school -- a consequence that leaves them more susceptible to violence, poverty and child marriage. 

WHO Strategic Health Operations Centre (SHOC) Room - WHO /Christopher Black

who.int

A panel of scientists and public health experts convened by WHO met in Geneva this week to prioritise the top five to ten emerging pathogens likely to cause severe outbreaks in the near future, and for which few or no medical countermeasures exist. These diseases will provide the basis for work on the WHO Blueprint for R&D preparedness to help control potential future outbreaks.

The initial list of disease priorities needing urgent R&D attention comprises: Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus disease and Marburg, Lassa fever, MERS and SARS coronavirus diseases, Nipah and Rift Valley fever. The list will be reviewed annually or when new diseases emerge.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - The most dangerous pathogens, according to WHO