Al Jazeera: World Food Day: The fight against food waste (Siddiqui, 10/16). IPS: World Food Day 2019 — ‘Our Actions Are Our Future’ (10/14). U.N. News: Obesity rates soar due to dramatic global diet shift, says U.N. food agency (10/16). Xinhua: Bangladesh observes World Food Day (10/17). Xinhua: S. African…

The Telegraph: Children’s lives are ‘cut short’ as countries urged to tackle inequality “Millions of children’s lives are being ‘cut short’ because countries are failing to tackle health inequality, research has found. The study, published in Nature, mapped death rates at the district level in 99 low- and middle-income countries…

The Guardian: Niger’s president blames explosive birth rate on ‘a misreading of Islam’ “A misreading of Islam led to Niger’s explosive birth rate, hampering the country’s fight to adapt to the climate crisis and preserve its shrinking resources, the country’s president has said. … [Mahamadou] Issoufou claims he has been…

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Keep girls in schools to end hunger and poverty, Sachs tells governments “Keeping girls in schools in Africa is key to lowering the fast-growing continent’s high fertility rates and ultimately ending hunger and poverty, U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs said Wednesday. … Africa currently has the world’s highest…

Borgen Magazine: A New XDR Medicine Could Save Lives (Hwang, 10/16). CNBC Africa: Improving health outcomes in Africa (Awoniyi, 10/16). The Guardian: Did a ‘white savior’s’ evangelical zeal take a deadly turn in Uganda? (Mwesigwa/Beaumont, 10/17). Homeland Preparedness News: Scientists decode immune response of Ebola vaccine (Galford, 10/16). Miami Herald:…

Nature: Data on child deaths are a call for justice Michelle Bachelet, U.N. high commissioner for human rights and former president of Chile “The chances of newborns surviving to adulthood have never been greater: in the past 20 years, rates of childhood death have fallen by more than half. Nearly…

Associated Press: U.N.: 200 million children under 5 eat too little or too much “One-third of children worldwide under age 5 — about 200 million youngsters — are either undernourished or overweight, undermining their full potential to grow and develop, the U.N. children’s agency said in a report Tuesday. UNICEF…

Associated Press: U.N. rights chief: Challenges increase to global cooperation (Lederer, 10/15). Associated Press: Post-war Liberians are demanding better mental health care (Paye-Layleh, 10/12). CNN: Drones, apps and smart lockers: The technology transforming healthcare in Africa (Lewis, 10/15). Devex: Q&A: What South Africa has learned tackling TB (Root, 10/16). Reuters:…

Al Jazeera: One in three young children undernourished or overweight: UNICEF “A third of the world’s nearly 700 million under five year olds are undernourished or overweight and face lifelong health problems as a consequence, according to a grim United Nations assessment of childhood nutrition released on Tuesday. ‘If children…

UNICEF USA: The Democratic Republic of the Congo Eliminates MNT In this post, Seva Tsivgas, global cause partnerships intern at UNICEF USA, writes, “The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has officially become the 47th country since 1999 to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT). This milestone was achieved despite…