Jessica Shepherd

Up to 250,000 children are at risk of malnutrition and disease in southern Madagascar as a political crisis and tropical cyclones exacerbate severe food shortages, the UN children agency said.

UNICEF said that the rains had failed again in the Indian Ocean island's southern region, devastating the last harvest and reducing the amount of safe water available for human consumption.

ICDDRB, the biggest centre for treating intestinal disorders, is reportedly taking 700 diarrhoea patients daily, on average, in Dhaka city. The number of people coming to it's hospital for diarrhoeal treatment, every day, appears to suggests a sort of epidemic. There are different reasons for diarrhoea attacks specially suffered by children. But the main one is unsafe water supply.

A bakery located in Kings Road, Trincomalee has been sealed following a report of the death of an old man and the hospitalizing of 148 others including schoolchildren after consuming buns and other bakery products.

Police spokesman SSP Ranjith Gunaskera said Selvaraja Dhuraisingham (62) died possibly from food poisoning after admission to the Trincomalee hospital.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid yesterday said the government wants to set up schools at around 2000 remote villages which lack presence of education institutions.

The lagging performance of American schoolchildren, particularly among poor and minority students, has had a negative economic impact on the country that exceeds that of the current recession, according to a report released on Wednesday.

Eleven children and five women fell unconscious after drinking contaminated water in Lasain Nawab area here on Sunday, hospital sources said.

A new campaign to save lives and prevent drug resistance by driving the price of the best malaria medicine down to as little as 20 cents was announced Friday by international health agencies and European governments.

The subsidy program, unveiled in Norway, will have an initial budget of $225 million and will be run by a new partnership called the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria.