Goal 4: reduce child mortality - Newsfeed

DHAKA Friday, April 03, 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of people in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, are dying prematurely because of air pollution, say health experts.

DURBAN Friday, April 03, 2009 (IRIN) - In the popular imagination, the face of the AIDS epidemic in southern Africa is often an orphan who has lost both parents to the virus and is now fending for him or herself in a household made up solely of other children

TORIT Wednesday, April 01, 2009 (IRIN) - Southern Sudan has introduced motorbike ambulances to its remote Eastern Equatoria region in a pilot scheme aimed at cutting rates of maternal mortality. Five powerful scrambler motorbikes with a sidecar “bed” have been deployed by the Ministry of Health to boost access to health facilities for pregnant women, officials said.

GAZA CITY Wednesday, April 01, 2009 (IRIN) - An estimated 1,346 children were left without one or more of their parents as a result of the recent 23-day Israeli assault on Gaza, according to Islamic Relief in Gaza.

NAIROBI Tuesday, March 31, 2009 (IRIN) - NGO expulsions have left humanitarian gaps not only in Darfur, but also in eastern Sudan and the so-called Three Areas bordering on Southern Sudan, Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile - volatile regions key to the success of a 2005 peace accord.

MAIMANA Tuesday, March 31, 2009 (IRIN) - Despite a July 2008 joint emergency appeal for US$404 million to help the most vulnerable 550,000 pregnant and lactating women and under-five children in Afghanistan, nutritious food aid - specially fortified food -is yet to reach those in need.

KAMPALA Tuesday, March 31, 2009 (IRIN) - Uganda's health ministry has set up surveillance teams near the border with South Sudan to check the spread of polio in its northern districts, where seven cases have already been reported, officials said.

N’DJAMENA Monday, March 30, 2009 (IRIN) - Yaya, 16, told IRIN he fought since age 10 in the rebellion in eastern Chad until his group signed a peace agreement with the government in 2006. Now in training to become a mechanic and driver as part of a demobilisation and reintegration programme, he said he wants only one thing: that the state guarantees peace and security.

BONDO Friday, March 27, 2009 (IRIN) - For the past year, Karen Awuor*, 15, has had a new daily ritual– taking antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. She discovered she was HIV positive during an unintended pregnancy that forced her to drop out of school; her baby died after just four months.

GUELENDENG Friday, March 27, 2009 (IRIN) - Mariam, 14, was forced to marry a man of over 60 in Guelendeng, 150 km south of the Chadian capital N'Djamena. Desperate, she told IRIN that she tried to commit suicide by self-immolation. Saved by her neighbours, Mariam spent more than one year in the hospital and said she now lives in fear that her father will send her back to her husband.

NIAMEY Thursday, March 26, 2009 (IRIN) - An ongoing three-month strike by 37,000 contract teachers in Niger threatens recent gains toward meeting the country’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of providing universal primary education, according to union leaders.

TEL AVIV Wednesday, March 25, 2009 (IRIN) - Anya, a Filipino migrant worker, visits a free clinic regularly. It is the only option available to her and her two young sons. Despite working full-time, she cannot afford to pay US$90 a month for medical insurance.

KABUL Wednesday, March 25, 2009 (IRIN) - A Taliban spokesman has said the Taliban are not against polio immunisation campaigns in areas under their influence or control. A statement to this effect was made to IRIN in a telephone interview with the insurgents’ chief spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, from an unidentified location.

BAGHDAD Wednesday, March 25, 2009 (IRIN) - Measles has claimed the lives of three babies in Diwaniyah Province, some 130km south of Baghdad, a health official has said.

NAIROBI Wednesday, March 25, 2009 (IRIN) - A five-day anti-polio campaign, targeting more than two million children in 42 districts, has been largely successful, officials said on 25 March, the last day of the house-to-house immunization project.

HILAYA Tuesday, March 24, 2009 (IRIN) - The screaming child wriggles in her mother’s lap as a health worker swabs her arms in preparation for a measles injection. It is tough being a child in South Sudan, where routine immunisation coverage is the lowest in world, according to official statistics.

NAIROBI Monday, March 23, 2009 (IRIN) - Most Somalis have little or no water, with only 29 percent of the population having access to clean drinking water, according to the UN Children's Fund.

HERAT Sunday, March 22, 2009 (IRIN) - The more than 1,000 children deported from Iran to Afghanistan’s western province of Herat in 2008 face poverty and are at risk of abuse, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and provincial authorities.

BISSAU Friday, March 20, 2009 (IRIN) - Intermittent teacher strikes that have disrupted the school year since October 2008 are on again as most of the country’s teachers went on strike on 19 March over salary arrears, according to the Union of Teachers.

MONROVIA Thursday, March 19, 2009 (IRIN) - Health officials have launched a strategy to tackle hunger in Liberia, where 37 percent of children under five suffer chronic malnutrition.