WHO NEWS
Recent news from WHO
Some of the world's leading international health organizations have launched a global strategy to develop a highly effective malaria vaccine by 2025. The strategy, called the Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap, was launched on 4 December.
There have been improvements in child survival in Africa for the first time since the 1980s, but each year more than a million African babies still die in the first month of life, according to a report by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Opportunities for Africa's newborns, released on 22 November.
An estimated 39.5 million people are living with HIV and there were 4.3 million new infections in 2006, with 2.8 million (65%) of these occurring in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UNAIDS/WHO 2006 AIDS Epidemic Update, released on 21 November.
Africa is developing solutions for fighting disease, according to the African regional health report: the health of the people, the first report to focus on the health of the 738 million people in WHO's African Region, released on 20 November.
For more about these and other WHO news items, please see: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/2007/en/index.html 