Lancet Editorial Argues Global Health Community ‘Too Complacent’ On Development Of An Effective, Affordable Malaria Vaccine   “What is still needed [to fight malaria] is the only tool that has ever truly conquered any infectious disease: an effective and affordable vaccine. And here, the global malaria community has been too complacent,” a…

Representatives of the African Union (AU) on Wednesday began meeting with members of the Obama administration in Washington, as part of the first Annual U.S.-African Union High Level Bilateral Meetings, United Press International reports (4/21).

Geithner, Gates Announce New Global Agriculture And Food Security Program In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announce the launch of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a fund “to help the…

China is responding to a major earthquake that injured thousands of people Wednesday in the country’s Tibetan region, the Associated Press reports. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the initial earthquake at a magnitude of 6.9, the news service reports.

Better Living Conditions Can Improve Health Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford write in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece about the need to “address the constant crisis families face daily in deplorable living conditions.” The authors reflect on several health problems associated with unsanitary and crowded living…

“The U.S. government’s international development agency is stepping up its focus on science and technology with a key appointment intended to enhance the agency’s programmes in the Middle East and bolster the Obama administration’s push for science diplomacy,” SciDev.Net reports.

Researchers on Friday released a study in the Lancet that found while “[m]ost countries in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East doubled their health budgets,” countries in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have trimmed their health spending as donors have boosted their health aid, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports.

Marking the conclusion of the three-day Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development (DIHAD) conference Tuesday, conference attendees called for humanitarians to adopt a more coordinated approach to tackling global health needs, the National reports. “Speakers, including health professionals and officials from international organisations, stressed the need to share medical knowledge and innovations during a crisis, citing the recent Haiti earthquake,” the newspaper writes.

The Associated Press looks at some anticipated changes to the “National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war.” The article focuses on the prospective strategy changes, but notes that the “revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the U.S. talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.”

Jobs-Drive Development For Haiti “Even before the earthquake, the Haitian economy was already on shaky ground. There is 70 to 80 percent unemployment in the formal economy. … U.S. policy helped build this disastrous economy,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker writes in a Miami Herald opinion piece. Baker says…