Unicef Report

Down from the foggy hills of eucalyptus and pine came Kezia Uzamukunda, her 3-month-old baby boy strapped to her back, for the injection of a measles vaccine that she knew would keep him healthy. Braving a cold morning rain, the 34-year-old woman hiked with 29 other peasant mothers, all of them barefoot, arriving after four hours at a remote health clinic here run by a Roman Catholic order called the Sisters of Notre Dame.

On many days, 12-year-old Safiullah and his brother, Dilagha, 7, begin scavenging after school. The two Afghans wander the roads and fields near this massive refugee camp in the desert, 35 miles north of Peshawar. They look for twigs, scraps of paper--anything to fuel a fire and help their adopted family survive. Four years ago their father, a moujahedeen resistance fighter, was killed in battle. Their mother died in a bombing.

As the voters of Brazil, Latin America's largest country, prepare to elect a new president, one is struck by the deep pessimism widely prevalent in the country, as elsewhere on the continent, about the ability of politicians to brake the present headlong rush into economic catastrophe.

An experimental malaria vaccine protected 65% of Mozambique infants who received a full course of injections, paving the way for a large clinical trial of what could be the first vaccine against the deadly disease, researchers reported Wednesday. Infants are among the most vulnerable to malaria. Immunization of infants has proved difficult for a variety of illnesses, including measles and pneumococcal disease.

Beneath the veneer of celebration that marked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's recent 56th birthday--nationwide fireworks, military parades, a golden-chariot ride and a mammoth, multitiered birthday cake--the Iraqi leader quietly put in place a bold economic strategy that analysts say devastated his enemies abroad and strengthened his support at home. With a single stroke of the pen, Hussein declared almost half his nation's currency worthless.

When Oureye Sall walked through her village in years past, young girls would flee in silent panic at the sight of her face. She was the cutter. She inherited the trade from her mother and made a tidy profit: a dollar per operation for the practice known locally as "cleaning," and in much of the rest of the world as female genital circumcision, or mutilation. Sall broke each razor blade in two for economy's sake and used each half until it was too blunt to cut properly.

The music of a marimba drifts up from the hotel patio to a landing where middle-aged couples from Cleveland and New York rock baby strollers to the rhythm of the lively old tunes. Those strollers, which came to Guatemala empty, are occupied by cinnamon-skinned tots who coo and occasionally fuss if a bottle slips to the floor.

More than 68 million people will die of AIDS in the next two decades unless massive intervention efforts are begun immediately, according to a grim new UNAIDS report issued Tuesday. About 22 million people have already died of AIDS worldwide and another 40 million are now HIV-positive, but the numbers are going to grow much higher than was previously believed possible "if we continue with prevention and treatment at the levels they are now," said Dr.

As the debate intensifies over U.S. policy toward Iraq, I keep thinking about a conversation I had last spring over dinner with a surgeon I'd met while visiting a hospital in Northern Iraq. "We have real problems with the United States," he said. "The American government always interferes in the Middle East. But it doesn't interfere enough in Iraq." As the rest of the world dithers about whether President George W. Bush overstepped bounds in declaring Iraq to be part of an "Axis of Evil," Kurds in the so-called "safe haven" of Northern Iraq have few doubts.

The 9-year-old girl was lying in a pool of blood at a Somali refugee camp, crying and pleading for help. "I thought, 'What has happened to this girl" recalled Dr. Milton Amayun. He picked her up, carried her to the camp clinic and examined her. And then he vomited.