Foreign Policy: Want to Fight Ebola? Help Liberia Invest in Toilets. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia “…Measuring progress toward clean water, sanitation, and hygiene in homes, schools, and hospitals will be an important component of achieving the new Global Goals, both in Liberia and around the world. … The…

GlobalPost: 8 million new toilets later, India isn’t much cleaner “…One year in, the Clean India Campaign has taken an important step to raise public and political awareness about a serious issue. But unless the government goes further than building new bathrooms, it will just be a lot of money…

Huffington Post: Health: The Glaring Omission at COP21 Olivier Brandicourt, CEO of Sanofi “…It should be self-evident that health needs to be a key consideration when developing climate policy … An increase in average global temperatures could mean the expansion of regions conducive to the spread of diseases … Climate…

Reuters: India proposes federal budget hike for social sectors “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Friday proposed to raise its budget for sanitation and the fight against malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, months after New Delhi faced criticism that spending cuts were crippling welfare programs. The budget increases for social sectors will…

The Lancet Infectious Diseases: Cholera in Iraq strains the fragile state “The current cholera outbreak in Iraq has exposed fault lines in the region’s public health infrastructure…” (Bagcchi, January 2016). Reuters: Squeezed by budget and Islamic State, Iraqi health system struggles “…With Iraqis fleeing Islamic State in ever greater numbers,…

SciDev.Net: Q&A: Toilets confront climate change “Two-and-a-half billion people worldwide have no access to safe, durable sanitation systems. Brian Arbogast, director of the water, sanitation, and hygiene program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tells SciDev.Net how innovative toilet technologies and business models could help fix this — and…

U.N. News Centre: Iraq: amid fears cholera outbreak may worsen, U.N. agencies step up support to government-led response “…UNICEF is part of urgent efforts underway to protect communities and families from the effects of a cholera outbreak that has already infected more than 2,200 people — about 20 percent of…

U.N. News Centre: El Niño puts more than 26 million children at risk in Eastern and Southern Africa — UNICEF “One of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded has placed the lives of 26.5 million children at risk of malnutrition, water shortages, and disease in 10 countries in Eastern…

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Delivering maternal health requires water and sanitation Anne Mutabaruka, head of programs at WaterAid Rwanda “…Water and sanitation are essential to [the human rights, good health, and progress of women and girls]. Girls cannot grow up healthy if they do not have clean water to drink, a…

Quartz: Angola cut spending for low oil prices and triggered a yellow fever health crisis “…With the [Angolan government’s] budget for waste collection services in particular cut by almost 70 percent, there has been a sharp uptick in the rise of communicable diseases. A yellow fever outbreak with roots in…