Mali said it had identified its first possible cases of Ebola since the start of an outbreak in neighboring Guinea, adding to fears that the deadly virus was spreading across West Africa.

Despite World Health Organization (WHO) prequalification of two safe and effective oral cholera vaccines (OCV), concerns about the acceptability, potential diversion of resources, cost and feasibility of implementing timely campaigns has discouraged their use. In 2012, the Ministry of Health of Guinea, with the support of Médecins Sans Frontières organized the first mass vaccination campaign using a two-dose OCV (Shanchol) as an additional control measure to respond to the on-going nationwide epidemic. Overall, 316,250 vaccines were delivered.

The government of Liberia and the World Bank have signed an agreement to finance the Liberian section of the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP), which also involves three other countries in the region.

New Delhi Pulling up the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led Madhya Pradesh government over the alleged illegal clinical drug trials in the country, the Supreme Court on Monday expressed concern over the issue, saying it was ‘unfortunate’ that humans were being treated as ‘guinea pigs’.

Coming down heavily on the state government, a Bench headed by Justice R M Lodha noted that inadequate measures were taken to curb the problem. It pulled up the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh government for not filing their response on PILs alleging large-scale illegal drug trials in the state and other parts of the country.

Crop-raiding is a major source of conflict between people and wildlife globally, impacting local livelihoods and impeding conservation. Conflict mitigation strategies that target problematic wildlife behaviours such as crop-raiding are notoriously difficult to develop for large-bodied, cognitively complex species. Many crop-raiders are generalist feeders. In more ecologically specialised species crop-type selection is not random and evidence-based management requires a good understanding of species' ecology and crop feeding habits.

An MoU to this effect will be signed between the parties concerned and the Government of Guinea

Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) has completed a suitability study in Guinea for promoting corporate farming through its Agro Business Development (ABD) Directorate and an incubatee, Top Worth Group of Companies.

Infant mortality in Equatorial Guinea appears to have declined since the discovery of oil in the 1990s, according to an assessment by the World Bank and other international agencies.

Insecticide treated nets (ITN) and indoor residual spraying (IRS) are the two pillars of malaria vector control in Africa, but both interventions are beset by quality and coverage concerns. Data from three control programs were used to investigate the impact of: 1) the physical deterioration of ITNs, and 2) inadequate IRS spray coverage, on their respective protective effectiveness.

In 2002 CREPA initiated a regional research and demonstration programme on ecological sanitation in seven West African countries. ECOSAN is focused on simultaneously improving sanitation and food production. This is done by making urine and faeces more hygienic and then using them as safe fertilisers.

The current food crisis has been largely policy-driven, which is probably good news because it means that policies can also reverse the process.

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