Maternal mortality remains a major challenge to health systems worldwide. Reliable information about the rates and trends in maternal mortality is essential for resource mobilisation, and for planning and assessment of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), the target for which is a 75% reduction in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) from 1990 to 2015.
The apparent failure to reduce maternal mortality during 20 years of the Safe Motherhood movement has been one of the most deforming scars on the body of global health. Despite strong advocacy efforts, political leaders have either ignored the call or failed to make the health of women in pregnancy their priority.
This report contains an assessment of the threat facing the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region from the recent (post-1950s) and rapid formation of meltwater lakes on the surface or at the end of a large number of the region's glaciers.
An avalanche struck a remote mountainous area of northern Afghanistan two weeks ago, killing 35 people and burying homes beneath the snow, a provincial official said on Tuesday.
It is China that provided Pakistan with the blueprint to build a nuclear weapon, in early 1980s, a small, reliable armament that could be delivered on India by attack aircraft or missile, according to a new book.
KABUL: Helicopters ferried rescuers to and bodies away from the site of a massive avalanches that blocked an important mountain pass north of Kabul as the death toll soared on Wednesday to 166, said officials. Hundreds more remained trapped in snowbound cars.
Massive avalanches roaring down a mountain pass north of Kabul may have killed more than 60 people on Tuesday, Afghan officials said, as rescuers evacuated about 400 injured victims. Search-and-rescue teams recovered the bodies of 24 people but said they fear 40 others may have also died, interior minister Hanif Atmar said. About 2,500 people were rescued from their snow-blocked vehicles.
