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We talked last week about a new report on preterm births the leading cause of death in newborn babies worldwide. Each year an estimated thirteen million babies are born too soon. More than one million of them die as a result of their prematurity. Yet experts say many early births can be prevented. The report came from the March of Dimes and the World Health Organization. Christopher Howson is the vice president for global programs at the March of Dimes, a nonprofit group. He says there are a number of simple, low-cost interventions that can improve the chances of a full-term birth. Mister Howson... 

Mobile phones have revolutionized the way people connect not only with family and friends but also business services. A good example: services that let people use their phones to send and receive money. Two companies, Safaricom and Vodafone, launched the M-Pesa mobile money service in Kenya in two thousand seven. Pesa means money in Swahili. The service operates much like a savings bank — which is important, because plenty of Kenyans do not have bank accounts. Most of the early users were young men who worked in cities and wanted to send money home to rural areas. Now customers can... 

Diarrhea kills one and a half million children each year one in five child deaths worldwide. The only disease that kills more children under age five is pneumonia. Experts say diarrhea causes more child deaths than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. New findings show it also kills more than a million adolescents and elderly people every year. Therese Dooley is a senior adviser at UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. She says in addition to the deaths, there are about two-point-five billion cases of diarrhea among children every year. But a new report says sixty percent of those in... 

Americans bought an estimated eighteen and a half million bicycles last year. Some bikes never get much riding. Mostly they gather dust. But a project based in Washington is putting unwanted bikes from the United States to good use in developing countries. Keith Oberg is the director of Bikes for the World. He says: «Everybody has an old bicycle, and it is usually not ridden. It sits there in the garage, or basement or shed, going to waste.» Stephen Popick recently had two bikes to donate. He brought in two mountain bikes that he and his wife rode for the past ten years. He said... 

The United Nations held a World Summit on Food Security in November. But the three-day meeting in Rome produced only limited measures to fight rising hunger. The U.N. World Food Program says more than a billion people — one in six worldwide — do not get enough food to be healthy. The troubled world economy is not the only cause of recent increases. The poorest countries continue to face high food prices, which have fallen elsewhere. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says more than thirty nations continue to need emergency food assistance. Secretary General Ban... 

Before refrigerators were invented, the next best thing was an ice box. But another way to keep food fresh is to use an evaporative cooler. A common design is a tall box with several shelves inside to hold the food. The shelves are pieces of metal with many small holes through them. The sides of the box are covered with pieces of thick cloth. Containers of water are placed at the top and bottom of the cooler. The ends of each piece of cloth lie in the water so the cloth stays wet. The cooler is put outdoors, but not in the sun. Air will pass through the wet cloth. The inside of the box will... 

Scientists continue to seek better weapons against malaria. Each year the number of cases is in the hundreds of millions worldwide. About a million people die, most of them in Africa. Economic losses from the disease amount to an estimated one percent of the African economy each year. George Dimopoulos is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. He says forty-two percent of the Earth's population live in areas where malaria-transmitting mosquitoes exist. All of these people are at risk of being infected with malaria. He says the sad thing... 

We received a question from a listener about how American schools use educational technology. There is not a simple answer. It depends on the subject and level of students, of course. But it also depends on the interest and training of the teachers, and the goals and budgets of the schools. Schools are almost all connected to the Internet. But some have more technology, and use it more, than others. For example, some schools use computers for activities like video conferencing, to bring the world into the classroom. And some classrooms are equipped with things like a Smart Board, a kind of... 

More than one and a half billion people around the world live without electricity. Finding better ways to bring light to the poor is the goal of researchers like David Irvine-Halliday. In the late nineteen nineties, the Canadian professor was working in Nepal when his return flight was cancelled. A delay gave him time to take a fourteen-day hiking trip in the Himalayas. As he tells it, one day he looked in the window of a school and noticed how dark it was. This is a common problem for millions of children around the world — and not just at school, but also at home. Many families... 

A new study says the leading cause of disability in older people in low and middle income countries is dementia. The researchers disagree with the World Health Organization which says blindness and other vision problems are the leading cause. Dementia is a loss of intellectual ability that affects memory, learning, attention, thinking and language skills. People with dementia may forget family members or not know what day it is. Sometimes they become angry or sad, hear voices, or see things that are not there. Renata Sousa from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London and other... 

The World Health Organization is using a new combination of drugs to treat human African trypanosomiasis disease, also known as sleeping sickness. The drugs nifurtimox and eflornithine will be given out in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Officials from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative say the new treatment has fewer side effects. It is also more effective and less costly than the drugs traditionally used. In addition, the new treatment reduces the number of injections needed. And it shortens the amount of time patients must spend in the hospital. Sleeping sickness threatens... 

A new study in West Africa shows how farm irrigation systems powered by the sun can produce more food and money for villagers. The study in Benin found that solar-powered pumps are effective in supplying water, especially during the long dry season. Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world with the least food security. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than one billion of the world's people faced hunger last year. Around two hundred sixty-five million of them live south of the Sahara Desert. Lack of rainfall is one of their main causes of food shortages.... 

The World Health Organization has begun to use a new vaccine against polio. Officials say it will become a major tool in the campaign to end a disease that mainly affects children under age five. The new formulation is known as B.O.P.V., or bivalent oral polio vaccine. It was used for the first time in December in a polio immunization campaign in Afghanistan. Carol Pandak is with the PolioPlus program of the service organization Rotary International. She explains that health workers have been using what are called trivalent vaccines in some places. These are areas like Afghanistan where more... 

Snakes bite an estimated five and a half million people worldwide each year. Experts say tens of thousands of people die from venom poisoning. An untreated or incorrectly treated bite might require the removal of a foot or an arm. Each year around four hundred thousand amputations are the result of snakebites. Last year, for the first time, the World Health Organization added snakebites to its list of «neglected tropical diseases.» This recognition aims to bring greater attention to the problem. Scientists know of about three thousand kinds of snakes. About six hundred of them are... 

More than three billion people are at risk from indoor air pollution because of the heating or cooking fuels they use. Most live in Africa, India and China. They use biomass fuels like wood, crop waste, animal waste or coal. These solid fuels may be the least costly fuels available. But they are also a major cause of health problems and death. For more than thirty years, the Aprovecho Research Center has been designing cleaner, low-cost cooking stoves for the developing world. Dean Still is the director of the group which is based in the United States. He notes a World Health Organization estimate... 

Agricultural experts have launched a land and water management project in the Middle East. The project seeks to increase food security in dry areas. Researchers say the water availability in some of the areas has dropped well below the internationally recognized standard. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Syria and Yemen are all taking part in the project. It is part of a larger ten-year effort called the Water and Livelihoods Initiative. The project is also expected to increase household income for farmers in the areas. The United States Agency for International Development provided... 

UNICEF is appealing for more than one billion dollars in aid for women and children around the world. The United Nations Children's Fund has released its «Humanitarian Action Report» for two thousand ten. The report lists twenty-eight countries and territories with some of the world's most pressing crises affecting women and children. Haiti was considered to be in crisis long before the earthquake in January. The deputy executive director of UNICEF, Hilde Johnson, says the quake has only made the need for aid more immediate. But she says children all over the world have... 

Counterfeit medicines are a widespread problem in developing countries. Like other counterfeits, they look like real products. But counterfeit drugs may contain too much, too little or none of the active ingredients of the real thing. People do not get the medicine they need. And in some cases the counterfeits cause tragic problems of their own. About a year ago, more than eighty children in Nigeria died after being given medicine for teething pain. And more than twenty children in Bangladesh died last year after being given acetaminophen. In both cases, the medications contained ingredients... 

We talked last week about counterfeit medicines and how the problem is especially bad in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The World Health Organization says up to thirty percent of the medicine sold in many developing countries is not real. It also estimates that up to fifty percent of the medicine sold on the Internet is counterfeit. That can put people at risk even in wealthy countries that represent only a small part of the counterfeit drug market. Today we look at what is being done to fight counterfeit drugs. Several companies are developing ways to make counterfeits easier to identify. And... 

International Women's Day is celebrated every year on March eighth. Groups around the world use the day to honor the achievements of women. They also use the day to call attention to some of the major social, political and economic crises affecting women and girls. Forced marriage, sexual abuse, poverty and lack of education are among the leading issues. The United Nations says one in five women worldwide will be the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime. The agency says rape and domestic violence are a major cause of death and disability among women ages fifteen to forty-four. And,...