“October 2, 2013, is the 144th birthday of [Mahatma Gandhi] and what better way for the Bill & Melinda Gates [Foundation] to celebrate this profound and inspirational leader than to announce our new partnership with [the government of India] in joint funding the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) to…

“With all the attention given to AIDS, malaria and TB in Africa, are we losing sight of other basic services?” Azad Essa, an online producer at Al Jazeera, asks in the news service’s “Africa” blog. He highlights a meeting between journalists and “the Chief Macha of Choma, leader of the…

The Center for Strategic & International Studies on Thursday released a new report [.pdf], titled “Water and Sanitation in the Time of Cholera,” which, according to the report summary, “considers opportunities for the United States to enhance its support for improving Haiti’s water supply and sanitation services and contributing to…

“The success in achieving the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) water target and massive growth in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs have masked a little-discussed secret: WASH interventions frequently fail,” IRIN reports. The news service examines the pressures aid organizations face to produce results; problems associated with not involving local communities…

“Soap and clean water for effective handwashing can help boost a young child’s growth, according to the first large-scale scientific review to link hygiene to height — one measure of child nutrition,” IRIN reports. The study — a review of “14 studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries that provided…

“There have been so many attempts to fix the water quality crisis, the public seems to have grown tired of it, and its impacts — especially malnutrition — have been swept under the proverbial rug,” Amanda Sperber, a communications fellow at mWater, writes in the Huffington Post’s “Water” blog. “This…

In a post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog, Doulaye Kone, a senior program officer for sanitation technologies and tools at the foundation, reports on the launch of “the first-ever country-specific Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in China,” writing, “The foundation has partnered with the University of…

“Bill and Melinda Gates’ competition to produce a high-tech toilet for the developing world has been questioned by toilet experts,” SciDev.Net reports. “An environmental engineer and an NGO worker have criticized the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for funding the development of advanced toilets that would be too expensive to…

“With its first official observance of World Toilet Day, the United Nations [on Tuesday] called on the international community to help break taboos around toilets, which are still out of reach to more than one-third of the global population, and make sanitation a global development priority,” the U.N. News Centre…

“Human Rights Watch on Tuesday warned that Zimbabwe’s capital Harare was at risk of repeating a cholera outbreak five years ago that killed over 4,200 people,” Agence France-Presse/France 24 reports (11/19). According to the group, “residents in Harare’s poorest townships have little access to clean piped water and often resort…