After years of steady decline, cholera is making a devastating comeback and targeting the world’s most vulnerable communities, UN health experts warned on Friday.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is seeking nearly $88 million to assist 6.5 million people in Malawi, including at least 573,000 boys and girls who are at risk of malnutrition.

Disasters can reverse hard-won development gains by decades and leave the most vulnerable populations more exposed to deadly risks. As nations gathered this week to take stock of how the world is better preparing for disasters in line with the Sendai Framework, Raul Salazar shared a view for UN News, from the Americas, a region that accounts for 53 per cent of global hazard-related economic losses, alongside high mortality rates.

PARIS, May 18 (IPS) - Some movie scenes keep replaying in one’s mind long after one has left the cinema, and this is certainly true of Moon Over Aburi, a short film shot in Ghana that has been gaining accolades since its release earlier this year.

ROME, May 18 (IPS) - Once the money-making businesses have turned Asia and Africa into their low-cost factories, to produce and market at higher prices their clothes and footwear, obtaining more profits by selling to these two continents around 90% of all their used and textiles waste.

BULAWAYO, May 18 (IPS) - Meat from wild animals is relished across Africa and widely traded, but scientists are warning that eating bush meat is a potential health risk, especially in the wake of pandemics like COVID-19.

PRETORIA, South Africa, May 18 (IPS) - Zambia defaulted on its debt in November 2021 but has not yet reached an agreement with its creditors. Its president recently warned that this situation is hurting its citizens and undermining its democracy because “you cannot eat democracy”.

MEXICO CITY, May 18 (IPS) - Mexico’s development banks have violated their own socio-environmental standards while granting loans for the construction of the Mayan Train (TM), the flagship project of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Nearly 15 months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, civilians are forced to live through an “unbearable routine”, amidst alarming levels of destruction and damage to their communities, said the deputy UN disarmament chief on Thursday.

Roughly 90 per cent of the population in Afghanistan is on the brink of poverty “and children bear the brunt of it,” the Representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the country, Fran Equiza, told journalists in New York on Thursday.