In the wake of severe fighting in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, worried rangers began a painstaking census late last month of the park's highly endangered mountain gorillas, nearly a third of the world's known population.
In recent years the underlying drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted profoundly, prompting conservationists to reassess their strategies for protecting forests. Those in the tropical timber industry need to think hard and fast about these new realities. If they fail to do so, they will increasingly be considered part of the forest-conservation problem, rather than part of the solution.
For so long now, there has been almost nothing but bad news about the likely fate of gorillas. They have been the victims of deforestation and incessant warfare in Central Africa. They have been hunted for meat. They are susceptible to the Ebola virus. Estimates in the 1980s suggested that there were roughly 100,000 western lowland gorillas - one of four subspecies. Since then, that number was thought to have declined by half.
More than 600 indigenous people in the Democratic Republic of Congo began mapping their rainforests on April 9 using gps technology. Their effort is to preserve about 2.4 million hectares of
The researchers studied the epidemiology of cholera in Katanga and Eastern Kasai, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, by compiling a database including all cases recorded from 2000 through 2005. Results show that lakes were the sources of outbreaks and demonstrate the inadequacy of the strategy used to combat cholera. May 2008
A group of rural women have launched a community radio station in Democratic Republic of Congo's South Kivu province. Radio Babusa FM will take up women and child welfare issues. An initiative
WHO's 60th anniversary celebrations have left Africa in the cold. Across the continent countries face high mortality rates and deep misery, and the regional office of the UN's specialised health organisation
>> Virgin Airlines owner Richard Branson recently claimed to have made history by launching the first biofuel-powered commercial flight from London to Amsterdam. The debatable point is
At the end of 2000, WHO declared that leprosy had been eliminated as a global public-health problem. Elimination is defi ned as a prevalence, per 10 000 population, of less than one patient diagnosed with leprosy and registered for treatment. The global prevalence fell from 5
