Fresh from summit diplomacy with North Korea, South Korea’s government now faces an entirely new challenge — trying to set international quality and size standards for condoms. The five-day meeting, organised by the International Organisation for Standardisation and the Seoul government, will begin next Monday on the southern resort island of Jeju.
Zimbabwe set out Wednesday to demonstrate that Western economic sanctions were hurting ordinary people, the poor and even the unborn. In its first detailed policy statement on sanctions, the central bank disputed claims from Britain and the United States that their ”targeted sanctions” — like travel bans on top officials — did not hurt most Zimbabweans.
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/ 25 September 2007
International health agencies began on Monday to install two laboratories to test cases of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, amid fears of an epidemic of the disease, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said. The two laboratories will allow a precise diagnosis within two to six hours.
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/ 24 September 2007
Only -million out of a -million appeal has come in to help growing numbers of victims of Sudan’s worst floods in living memory, the United Nations said on Monday. Throughout Sudan, heavy rains have sparked flash floods and rivers have burst their banks, sweeping away tens of thousands of homes.
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/ 22 September 2007
Nine cases of Ebola virus have been confirmed in the West Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is at the epicentre of an outbreak that has killed at least 174 people, a World Health Organisation official said on Friday. Symptoms of the epidemic were first seen on April 27.
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/ 12 September 2007
A tropical sun rises over Havana and in the neighbourhood of Vedado, a maze of worn, bleached apartment blocks, a unique healthcare system limbers up for another day. In Parque Aguirre, a small plaza shaded by palms, two dozen pensioners form a semi-circle and perform a series of stretches and gentle exercises, responding to the commands of a spry septuagenarian.
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/ 11 September 2007
An outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, a deadly disease for which there is no treatment, has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Samples from five people have tested positive for the Ebola virus in the southern province of Kasai Occidental.
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/ 10 September 2007
Men are five times more likely to commit suicide than women, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group said on Monday, World Suicide Day. The World Health Organisation (WHO), meanwhile, estimates that on average almost 3 000 people commit suicide every day.
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/ 5 September 2007
Seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries. Health ministers from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal will take part in the launch of the initiative at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office later on Wednesday.
HIV has slashed life expectancy in Zimbabwe by up to 19 years for men and 22 years for women but births still outpace deaths, according to the first study to detail how the Aids pandemic has affected the country’s wider population. The study, led by Simon Gregson of Imperial College London, sought to gauge HIV’s impact on Zimbabwe to see if researchers got it right in 1989.