Molecular biology researchers at Simon Fraser University are beginning to piece together a puzzle that may help doctors and scientists save more than a million lives a year. Christian Frech, lead author of a newly published study on malaria parasites announced that researches at SFU have isolated 44 genes unique to the malaria parasites that infect humans. Frech said these genes provide a new target for drugs to cure malaria and vaccines that can prevent it altogether. “We know from the past,” Frech explains, “that genes that are good vaccine targets are also species specific.”

NEW YORK / OTTAWA, November 28, 2011 Sub-Saharan African countries that train, and invest in, their doctors end up losing billions of dollars as the clinicians leave to work in developed nations, finds research conducted by the University of Ottawa. According to the study The financial cost of doctors emigrating from sub-Saharan Africa: human capital analysis published on British Medical Journal’s website, South Africa and Zimbabwe have the greatest economic losses in doctors due to emigration, while Australia, Canada, the

The directors of the UNHCO Special-Missions have been invited by the Secretary-General, H.E. Hamit Manar, to the annual Directors’-Conference in the UAE, which was held between the 22nd and the 24th of November 2011.

In addition to the discussion of the annual work programme 2011 and the activities of the local missions on the basis of the earlier adopted programme, the director of international relations of the UNHCO, Rodolfo Vasquez, initiated a discussion about the new work programme of the Organziation.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkley and the University of Liverpool have found that severe pneumonia cases in young children are cut by one-third when homes have cooking stoves equipped with smoke-reducing chimneys. The Lancet study showed the negative health impacts of smoke exposure from dirty cooking stoves and open fires. Cooking stoves are the main source of cooking and heating for approximately three billion people worldwide.