During opening remarks of the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York, former President Bill Clinton said, “[W]e have more attending this meeting than ever before,” Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal reports. “Despite record attendance and commitments made, Clinton addressed the reduction in global wealth upfront, urging leaders who have not yet identified which causes to support to instead support multi-year pledges already under way that have been restructured due to lack of funding,” according to the news service. After Clinton, President Barack Obama addressed the summit, “[f]ollowing” a theme that encouraged meeting participants to take action (Banjo, 9/22).

The Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) 2009 meeting, which begins Tuesday in New York, has added a new theme to its agenda – “investing in women and girls to narrow the gender gap,” Bloomberg reports in an article examining the conference. “In all the world there is only one strategy which clearly slows population growth, raises income and promotes more social stability that is supported across all religious and cultural lines,” former President Clinton said. “And that is putting all the girls in school and giving all the young women access to the labor market.”

Lancet Editorial, Comment Address Climate Change, Health In addition to the Lancet’s recent publication of an opinion piece and letter by 18 doctor association leaders about the potential health risks associated with climate change, the journal includes an editorial about sexual and reproductive health and climate change and a comment…

The torrential rains that began in June in West Africa and subsequent floods have forced an estimated 150,000 people from their homes and claimed the lives of 160, VOA News reports. The worst affected countries include Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Sierra Leone.

AFP Examines Polio In Afghanistan Agence France-Presse examines the re-emergence of polio in Afghanistan, which is one of four countries where the disease is endemic. According to AFP, “Health care, or the lack of it, is one of many problems facing Afghanistan, eight years after a war to topple the…

Forbes examines efforts currently under way to help people living in India and Kenya access clean drinking water through a partnership between Acumen Fund, “a nonprofit global venture fund focused on alleviating poverty” and the design firm IDEO.

Health ministers from 11 member states in the WHO’s South East Asian region on Tuesday at the 62nd session of the WHO Regional Committee for South East Asia adopted the Kathmandu Declaration on Protecting Health Facilities from Disasters, which commits them to make health facilities better prepared for health emergencies, Republica reports.

According to Canada’s National Post, a humanitarian coalition “warns East Africa faces ‘a perfect storm of crop failures, a multi-year lack of rain, conflicts and political turmoil,’ which now threatens 20 million people with severe hunger.”

Nearly 600,000 West Africans Affected By Flooding, U.N. Says The U.N. on Monday “sharply increased its toll of the number of people affected by floods in West Africa, putting the number at more than 592,000 in no less than 10 countries,” Agence France-Presse reports. Yvon Edoumou, a spokesperson for the…

U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories Maxwell Gaylard “urged Israel to ease its embargo of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and allow in materials urgently needed to repair water and sanitation services,” Agence France-Presse reports.