Enseignant au département de biochimie de l'université de Douala, Francioli Koro Koro craint que le relâchement dans le suivi du protocole sanitaire n'entraine l'apparition de variants dans des pays qui n'en avaient pas.

Francioli Koro Koro : Les risques de la CAN 2022 en période de COVID-19

Au menu de cette nouvelle édition de notre magazine hebdomadaire « Santé, Science et Développement » :
- Burkina Faso : Une cinquantaine d’établissements privés de soins fermés à Ouagadougou 
- Côte d’Ivoire : Le gouvernement approuve la création de l’Ordre national des infirmiers et infirmières
- Guinée : Etat des lieux de la lutte contre les Maladies tropicales négligées qui affectent les populations les plus pauvres et les plus vulnérables
- Qu’est-ce que le muguet buccal et comment faire pour l’éviter ? Réponses de notre spécialiste dans la rubrique Quèsaco
Santé, Science et Développement avec Sylvie Akoussan.

SSD 128 - La Côte d’Ivoire crée l’ordre national des infirmiers et infirmières

Pr Ousmane Ndiaye, chef de service de pédiatrie à l’hôpital Albert Boyer de Dakar (Sénégal) évoque les risque de la macrosomie, les bébés de plus de 4 kg à la naissance.

Pr Ousmane Ndiaye : Les gros bébés sont beaux mais risquent l'obésité

Pr Mamadou Abdoul Diop :  La necessaire collaboration entre les décideurs et les matéhématiciens

Ange R. Miessan, miss maths 2022 en Côte d'Ivoire, décrit sa passion pour cette science

Le délégué national de l'ONG Planète Urgence au Cameroun décrit l'impact de l'exploitation du fer à Lobé.

René Noungang : Les conséquences du projet sur les éléments abiotiques

Le délégué national de l'ONG Planète Urgence au Cameroun décrit l'impact de l'exploitation du fer à Lobé au sud du Cameroun

René Noungang : Les conséquences du projet sur les éléments biotiques

Pour l'autorité traditionnelle, le projet d'exploitation du fer de Lobé menace l'existence même de son peuple.

Sa majesté Njokou Djongo, chef du village Ebodjé, dénonce la non-protection des minorités

Un natif du village relève les contradictions qui entourent le projet.

Mckey Ngomi : Les paradoxes du projet d'exploitation du fer de Lobé

This month’s podcast explores how a data revolution can help push governments to be more accountable to meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Ndeye Fatu-Sesay of the Millenium Challenge Coordinating Unit talks about progress in Sierra Leone, and how more can be done to listen to the voices of the country’s citizens.

Next, we travel to Ethiopia for the second meeting of the Africa-EU Energy Partnership. The AEEP is struggling to meet their clean energy goals by 2020, according to Jacob Waslander, head of the Climate Change and Energy Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands. The solution must incorporate small-scale local energy to reach more Africans, according to Gianluca Cescon, who builds microgrids in Tanzania and is head of country operations at Devergy.

Then we hear from Anne Radl of the Humanitarian Centre about a unique event to tackle development challenges. The Innovation and Development Hackathon will team students, professionals and NGOs to develop projects that will improve transparency along the global food supply chain. Past innovations include the SIM-Prints mobile biometric scanner to help Medic Mobile keep track of patient medical records.

Finally, former director of field operations at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Andrew MacMillan, pays us a visit. He talks about a school building project in one of Kenya’s poorest districts that is also helping to build community resilience to health and farming crises. He calls for new food management programmes to curb obesity and eradicate hunger.

http://www.scidev.net/global/energy/multimedia/scidev-net-podcast-africa-s-energy-struggle-the-data-revolution-and-more.html

Image credit: Dieter Telemans / Panos


SciDev.Net Podcast: Africa’s energy struggle, the data revolution, and more

This broadcast also explores Africa’s knowledge economy and how biomedical researchers establish informed consent.

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/scidev-net-podcast-geojournalism-the-world-s-largest-radio-telescope-and-more.html

Global SciDev.Net Podcast: Geojournalism, the world’s largest radio telescope and more!

زعزعة الاستقرار ثم جائحة كوفيد-19، ثم الحرب الروسية الأوكرانية عوامل فاقمت المشكلة ولم تسمح أبدا بتمام التعافي

س وج حول "الأمن الغذائي" بالمنطقة العربية مع المدير الإقليمي للفاو

This edition explores sustainable architecture, the financial risks of farming and Cuba’s scientific diaspora.

http://www.scidev.net/global/environment/multimedia/scidev-net-podcast-climate-change-adaptation-and-more.html

SciDev.Net Podcast: Climate change adaptation and more

This month’s podcast features a long journey across Tanzania to discover how low-tech innovation can help developing nations eradicate poverty and meet the Millennium Development Goals. From improved cookstoves to a new system that combines sanitation and composting, small initiatives aimed at local communities can bring big leaps where limited resources and infrastructure are available.

Looking at the Millennium Development Goals, we also shed light on what’s needed to reduce global carbon emissions in order to reduce global warming and prompt sustainable development. Joyeeta Gupta of the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, says that countries ignoring the issue of climate change have to be isolated by the international community, while the developing world needs to find a new model of sustainable development.

We then talk about conservation with the story of an award-winning vet who is trying to save the endangered grey crowned crane of Rwanda, which is being wiped out by poaching. 

We also meet Chris Albon of non-profit tech company Ushahidi to discuss how open data tools can map human rights abuses during crises.

Finally, there is a sneak preview of next month’s podcast: border water wars and World Water Week.


SciDev.Net podcast: Making leaps for MDGs, mapping human rights abuse and more

In this month’s programme, we examine how the Ebola emergency has led to new forms of humanitarian response. One is the use of music to educate people about safety practices using simple language. We interviewed Carlos Chirinos, a visiting professor at New York University, United States, where he specialises in radio and development. He says that local West African communities tend to trust musicians more than doctors as sources of information, making them powerful allies when spreading public health messages.

We learn how biobanks, which store biological samples, are helping Africa foster local research capacity and what challenges the collection and management of genetic material present.
 
Shivaji Pandey, a special advisor to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, shares his views on the organisation’s 2014 report on food insecurity. It highlights significant progress towards the global eradication of hunger, but points to remaining political challenges.
 
We also find out about ‘flying donkeys’: cargo drones that, within a couple of years, could be delivering blood to remote parts of Uganda. There are hopes that these drones will transform transport in Africa by opening up rural areas and reducing urban congestion.
 
Finally, opinion and special features editor Anita Makri tells us about SciDev.Net’s upcoming ‘Spotlight’ on urban sustainable development.

http://www.scidev.net/global/disease/multimedia/podcast-flying-donkey-drones-biobanks.html

SciDev.Net Podcast: ‘Flying donkey’ drones, biobanks and more

In this month’s programme, we discover how technology is turning mapping into a powerful tool for supporting development and tackling humanitarian crises.

First, at the launch of the Missing Maps Project in London, United Kingdom, we join volunteers as they help to map two vulnerable areas in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, using satellite imagery to create basic maps to which local volunteers will add place names. 

Then we speak to Anna Mason from MapAction, a charity that provides mapping services after disasters, to learn more about the satellite technology underlying open mapping work.

In Congo, we discover how mobile phones help researchers fight poaching. An icon-based phone application enables people — who may be unable to read and write — living in the forest to record and map areas at risk. 

Finally, we discover how a data repository is helping journalists and policymakers understand the complex water system of the Tibetan plateau, also known as ‘the Third Pole’, which provides water that more than a billion people rely on for drinking or to irrigate crops.

http://www.scidev.net/global/technology/multimedia/podcast-open-mapping-development.html


SciDev.Net Podcast: Open mapping for development

Pr Amadou Bocoum, secrétaire général adjoint de la Société malienne de gynécologie-obstétrique.

Pr Amadou Bocoum : Etat Des Lieux Et Circonstances De La Césarienne Au Mali

Amadou Bocoum, secrétaire général adjoint de la Société malienne de gynécologie-obstétrique.

Pr Amadou Bocoum : Les Décès Suite Aux Césariennes Au Mali

Idi Saïdou, épidémiologiste au ministère de la Santé publique du Niger

Dr Idi Saïdou : Les Facteurs D'augmentation Des Césariennes En Afrique

In this month’s programme, we examine what’s on the radar for science and development in 2015.

First, we take stock of the global response to the escalating danger of climate change, with a report from the UN’s latest climate summit in Lima, Peru. We reflect on the outcome of the conference, on what ongoing efforts will be taking place over coming months and on the major milestone for climate negotiations: the next UN climate summit in Paris, France, at the end of the year.

To mark the start of the UN year of light and light-based technologies, we open our series on light technology for development by travelling to Tanzania to discover how solar power and mobile phones can fulfil basic energy needs and support grass-roots entrepreneurship.

Finally, as the world takes stock of what has been achieved within the Millennium Development Goals initiative, we discuss solutions to accelerate progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals that will succeed them. We talk to Peter Singer, a proponent of science and innovation in global health, who explains how to encourage the scaling up of innovation success, and how to measure it.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/scidevnet-podcast-light-energy-radar-2015.html

SciDev.Net Podcast: What’s on the radar for 2015

Data is changing the world. It influences our way of learning, communicating and consuming services. And it is affecting development, informing policymaking and empowering citizens.

Since the advent of the internet, the use of data has become widespread, with faster and more powerful tools to process online information and big data sets. For example, scientists can now collect information from sources such as social media or telecommunication databases to study people’s behaviours and disease patterns.

But as technical capabilities grow at ever increasing speeds, scientists and policymakers still struggle with ethical and political issues, particularly in the developing world. In this month’s podcast, we focus on some of the main questions related to the use of data for development.

We speak with Birte Sniltsveit, an evaluation specialist who has helped to map large archives of academic information, making them available and easy to navigate, in an effort to inform policymaking around issues such as payment for environmental studies.

We then travel to Nepal with Vanessa Goas of Aid Data, where we discover how geocoding and mapping aid
projects can help to improve the impact of spending.

But data isn’t just important for policymaking and research. It is also relevant for citizens concerned about their privacy. We talk about the ethics of big data for public health with researcher Effy Vayena, who wrote a recent study on the subject.
 
This is part of a set of pieces on data funded by the Hewlett Foundation.

SciDev.Net Podcast: Tapping into data

Serge Armel Njidjou, concepteur d'une couveuse connectée, décrit ce qu'est, à ses yeux, une innovation.

Serge Armel Njidjou

In this month’s programme, we imagine a hotter world through the eyes of scientists and policymakers. 

We kick off our podcast with ‘super beans’: 30 new varieties that can thrive in weather extremes. The beans were developed by scientists at CGIAR, a global research partnership for food security, to protect the ‘meat of the poor’ from being wiped out in a warmed world. 

We then visit Oxford University in the United Kingdom where we hear from climate scientists running a global climate model on tens of thousands of volunteers’ home computers. With this experiment, they are investigating how global warming is increasing the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events.

Amid uncertainties about what tomorrow’s hotter world will look like, one thing scientists are sure of is that sea levels will rise, threatening the world’s coastal populations. We learn how researchers are now including coastal managers in the picture and how they try to provide them with new tools to prepare for the “most unlikely but potentially catastrophic events.” 

Finally, we talk with Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, about the challenges ahead for international climate finance and who will pay the bill for the climate impacts affecting the developing world.

http://www.scidev.net/global/food-security/multimedia/monthly-podcast-super-beans-climate-models.html


SciDev.Net Podcast: Super beans, climate models and more

The powerful earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April could be just the first of a series of quakes to hit the region in coming weeks. 

Future tremors could add to the current death toll of more than 4,800 people and make it harder for aid agencies to deliver help where it’s needed. While NGOs are saving lives on the ground, freeing people trapped under the rubble and building emergency shelters, we learn how a team of mappers in the United Kingdom teamed up with the organisation Kathmandu Living Labs to build a real-time map of the affected areas. Their work could allow humanitarian staff to deliver aid faster and more effectively, particularly if there are further tremors.

In this month’s podcast, we also discover how a new device that filters the blood of people with malaria may strengthen efforts to fight drug-resistant forms of the disease. The device, which works like a kidney dialysis machine, uses the magnetic properties of the infected cells to capture them and remove them from the blood.

We then talk with Melissa Leach, director of the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom, about how social and cultural factors must be considered if more-resilient healthcare systems are to be built in Ebola-stricken countries

On the issue of public health, we speak with Martin Sepulveda from the research division of the IBM Corporation, United States, about a new index to measure fairness in research.

http://www.scidev.net/global/disasters/multimedia/May-podcast-mapping-nepal-post-quake.html

SciDev.Net Podcast: Mapping Nepal post-quake and more

African Universities need to take radical action to drive change on the continent says Ernest Aryeetey, the vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana. “Without reform, without any intention to become more relevant, they probably could not survive,” he says. Aryeetey aims to turn his university into a world-class research institution that can help transform Ghana’s economy.

In this interview, he talks about the recent reforms introduced to raise the quality and number of researchers the university produces and explains why African universities need to “internationalise”: enter into partnerships with other universities across the world to expose their researchers to the best and newest global academic thinking.

This is part of the Africa’s PhD Renaissance series funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/reforming-african-universities-economies-audio-interview.html

Reforming African universities to transform economies

Le Mali lance une campagne d’indentification des abonnés du téléphone mobile.

Interview Choguel Kokalla Maïga, ministre de l’économie numérique au Mali

The sound of male frogs croaking encourages captive frogs to mate. Researchers play it on a loop for hours in the rain chamber where fertile frogs are kept. Read more about how researchers are working to reverse the decline of endangered tropical frogs by studying their mating at : http://www.scidev.net/global/biodiversity/multimedia/frogs-conservation-prevent-extinction.html

Red-eyed tree frog calling sound

In early October the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will nominate its new chair, chosen from five candidates announced in August. In this month’s podcast, we kick off a series of interviews where we hear their thoughts about the future of the IPCC and its role in informing sustainable development.

Our first two guests are Nebojsa Nakicenovic, energy economist and deputy director general of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria, and Chris Field, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US. We ask them what they plan to bring to the table in the lead-up to the UN’s climate summit in December, and about their vision for a global response to climate change.
We then discuss a project that uses biomass to power off-grid communities in rural India and produces ‘biochar’, a type of charcoal used to fertilise soil. The project’s founders expect to remove 500 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year for each plant installed and to reach one million people who are currently off grid.

Finally, we hear from a scientist who is studying the evolution of Lassa fever, a virus endemic to West Africa, which kills approximately 5000 people every year. The hope is to develop a vaccine against the virus.


SciDev.Net Podcast: Batteries from rice husks and more

When the media reports on the fight against tuberculosis, it’s usually the scientific innovations that get coverage — the hunt for more effective vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tools.  

But an issue that deserves attention is the creative approaches to TB care adopted by those shouldering most of the burden: nurses. In countries where health systems are poorly funded and understaffed — 95 per cent of TB deaths are in low- and middle-income countries — nurses play a vital role, often acting as the primary care givers for patients who might rarely, if ever, see a doctor. 

In this interview for World TB Day, we speak to Gini Williams, a TB nurse consultant and pioneer of nurse training programmes. “It’s no good having new diagnostics and treatments if you don’t have access to them and [don’t] have people who know how to use them,” Williams says. ”Services and systems around supporting patients are very important.”   

The “human nature” of TB — a debilitating disease that can take months or years to cure, where the effectiveness of treatment hinges on an individual’s needs, responses and circumstances  — demands treatments that take into account more than the purely medical, Williams says. Treatment requires a holistic approach factoring in in people’s social, economic, environmental situations and psychological needs. And nurses are often best-placed to address these and to provide the patient support and education so vital to controlling TB.

Yet nurses rarely get rigorous TB training — rarer still training that focuses on the breadth of approaches needed to tackle the disease. Williams and her colleagues at the International Council of Nurses TB Project have therefore created training courses  designed and run by nurses, for nurses. These have led to improvements in infection control, made diagnostic processes more robust, and have strengthened relationships between both labs and clinics, and nurses and patients. 

Nurses have also been trained to research what techniques work where and how to improve systems, Williams says. This both helps strengthen TB response, and means that nurses can take the lead in shaping interventions to improve the lives and treatment outcomes of millions of people.

The interview was recorded yesterday at King’s College London, United Kingdom, at the opening of an exhibition of photographs by TB nurses in South Africa, organised by TB researcher Uta Grosse. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/tb/multimedia/innovative-training-nurses-tb-care.html


Innovative training for nurses on front-line of TB care

If a few decades ago environmental and climatic changes were the remit of scientists and activists only, now concerns over the future of the planet have gone mainstream.

Climate change and industrial pollution are now threatening the availability of food, and given the current rate at which humans are multiplying, within a few decades there may not be enough food to feed the world’s population. 

Now scientists are racing to protect our most precious asset, the world’s plants, 20 per cent of which are currently threatened.

Following the publication of one landmark study showing how plants’ diversity is under- represented in the world’s genetic archives, and how this could spell disaster for food security in the decades to come, we travelled to the world’s largest seed bank to investigate.

http://www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/multimedia/podcast-seed-investment-april-2016.html

Music for this podcast is by David Szesztay
You can listen, subscribe to and rate our podcast on iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/scidev.net/id969129651?mt=2


SciDev.Net podcast: seed investment

Global conflicts now often last longer than they did, and they are becoming more complex to understand and address. Some of the worst civil wars, for example in Syria or South Sudan, have now lasted so long that young children born there hardly remember peace. Food shortages can become severe during conflict, and people are much more vulnerable to extreme weather.

But crisis response is getting smarter, and humanitarian workers can now take advantage of planning tools such as satellite imagery. 

Images from space can help aid agencies restore food supplies, decide on how best to distribute funds and predict violence.

But emergency response during war isn’t the only time satellite imagery helps. A truly effective humanitarian response must follow the lives of refugees long after the immediate aftermath of a conflict, says Taner Kodanaz, a director at DigitalGlobe. 
The firm owns and manages an array of satellites that provide accurate imagery of human activities on the ground. It uses these to cooperate with international institutions such as the UN to analyse migration patterns and identify early warning of conflict.

In this interview, Kodanaz explores the many ways satellite technology supports humanitarian response and explains how space imagery is used to achieve aid goals.

http://www.scidev.net/global/aid/multimedia/satellites-humanitarian-work-refugees.html

The power of satellites in humanitarian work

An interview with Brian Kamanzi, UCT engineering student, on what decolonising the curriculum means to him, and why STEM students need better grounding in the politics of science, industry and development.  

On 16 June 1976, thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets of the Johannesburg township of Soweto, in protest at the apartheid government’s imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction, as well as at broader government oppressions. The brutal police response to the Soweto uprising shocked the world and became a decisive moment in the history of apartheid resistance. Estimates of the numbers killed by police vary between 176 and 700.
 
Forty years later, the country is again seeing student protests — this time about fees, education access, curriculum reform and wider social injustices — expand from student sites of struggle to reshape broader spaces of debate. This is a very different South Africa, but one that many students and others believe has not changed enough in the two decades since the fight for democracy was won.

In a pair of interviews, we hear from two students heavily involved in the #RhodesMustFall movement and #FeesMustFall campaigns. Kealeboga Mase Ramaru is a graduate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) who now works for Equal Education, a movement working for education quality and equality in South Africa. Brian Kamanzi is a UCT engineering student. 

Here they discuss the background and goals of the campaigns, and their myriad sites of struggle. They reflect on the role of digital media in twenty-first century activism and the push “to create a new politics” — one that is less dominated by patriarchal structures and that creates a fairer, safer space for female and non-binary voices. And Kamanzi discusses why it is so crucial to ensure science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses have a much stronger political component, equipping students with the critical capacity for interrogating the politics of industry and development in South Africa and beyond. 

The interviews were recorded at the Going Global conference in Cape Town, South Africa, last month, by Imogen Mathers. 

This is part of the Africa’s PhD Renaissance series on higher education across the continent, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.


http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/south-african-student-politics-soweto.html




Student politics, science and the push for self-determination

The state of education in South Africa has been the focus of sustained protest and political debate over the past 18 months. With the rise of the student-led Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall campaigns in early 2015, debates have raged over the escalating price of university education, the content of curriculums and broader problems of social inequality. 
But there are massive problems in the primary and secondary sectors too. Access to quality education remains deeply unequal and divided along social lines. Critics say the government has done far too little to improve education in the 22 years since the end of apartheid, and in many areas the situation seems to be getting worse, with overcrowding, and inadequate resources and staff. About 80 per cent of South Africa’s 25,000 schools are officially classified as struggling. 
In this audio feature, recorded in Cape Town in May, I speak to primary teachers and students as well as education experts from the Partners for Possibility programme, which is working to overhaul government primary schools. It is building partnerships between school principals and local business leaders to bring the innovation and creative skills of South Africa’s flourishing business sector into state education. Together, principals and their business partners assess what the problems facing schools are and come up with solutions. Funding and training collaborations between businesses, universities and local civil society then work to put these in place. 
Central to this is the idea of schools as the hub of communities, connecting parents, families, teachers and local organisations. I visited Kannemeyer Primary School in a neighbourhood in the Cape Flats, a series of townships lying on the south-west fringes of Cape Town. There I spoke to the principal, staff and students of the school about the challenges facing South African education, and what they have been doing to tackle these head on. “We need to get every school to develop and restore full citizenship to all our children,” the principal, Ridwan Samodien, told me. “All the adults, all the citizens need to hold the hands of our children, so that together we can get our children on the correct path to success and to make a meaningful difference in this country.”  

With thanks to the staff and pupils of Kannymeyer Primary School, Cape Town. 
http://www.scidev.net/global/education/multimedia/partnerships-south-african-schools.html

New partnerships bring hope to South African schools

Hear MSF’s Elvina Motard explain how new technologies are transforming emergency response. 

With humanitarian crises intensifying worldwide, medical relief organisations are increasingly stretched. The protracted nature of conflicts also poses a challenge: rather than running short-term operations, charities such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are now in countries for far longer. And this means they need more durable kit, clinics built from long-lasting materials rather than the traditional tented encampments, and robust infrastructure.  

I spoke to Elvina Motard, MSF technical team leader based in Belgium. She and her team have been experimenting with 3D printing and virtual reality to improve the design and effectiveness of hospitals and training programmes for field staff. 

Until recently, MSF used 2D drawings when designing hospitals. But for medical staff and others unfamiliar with architectural design, such drawings can be hard to visualise as real structures. Today the organisation uses 3D printed models to help the process. Medical staff, architects and engineers can get together, discuss what the medical needs and contextual constraints are, and use 3D models of buildings, equipment and technical elements to design the best possible hospital. 

Similarly, virtual reality programs that enable users to navigate hospitals can immerse staff in their design and acclimatise new field staff to the environments to which they will be exposed. 

MSF is planning further uses for these technologies. Top of its list is to design a program that guides staff through medical procedures. As crises deepen worldwide and wars drag on, innovations like these can improve the care that people receive in crises. 


3D printing and virtual reality transform crisis response

For most people a doctor is probably the first port of call when it comes to informFor most people a doctor is probably the first port of call when it comes to information about how to keep in good health. Still, much guidance gets broadcast by the media, and in developing countries the radio remains a major source of public health advice.

But just how much is the impact of the mass media? Do they save lives, and at what cost? 

For five years, the West African country of Burkina Faso has been a testing ground for a media campaign designed to answer these elusive questions using the gold standard of scientific study, a cluster-randomised clinical trial. The trial targeted child mortality, treating the media as any other health intervention and measuring lives saved after three years of continuous radio programming with information about behaviours that can prevent disease, such as taking a child to a health centre.

SciDev.Net spoke to the project’s leader, Roy Head, CEO of the social enterprise Development Media International. Head explains the rationale behind the study and offers a preview of the results, due to be published later this year. 

The interview was recorded on 23 February at the 2017 ISNTD Festival organised by the International Society of Neglected Tropical Diseases in London, UK.
ation about how to keep in good health. Still, much guidance gets broadcast by the media, and in developing countries the radio remains a major source of public health advice.

But just how much is the impact of the mass media? Do they save lives, and at what cost? 

For five years, the West African country of Burkina Faso has been a testing ground for a media campaign designed to answer these elusive questions using the gold standard of scientific study, a cluster-randomised clinical trial. The trial targeted child mortality, treating the media as any other health intervention and measuring lives saved after three years of continuous radio programming with information about behaviours that can prevent disease, such as taking a child to a health centre.

SciDev.Net spoke to the project’s leader, Roy Head, CEO of the social enterprise Development Media International. Head explains the rationale behind the study and offers a preview of the results, due to be published later this year. 

The interview was recorded on 23 February at the 2017 ISNTD Festival organised by the International Society of Neglected Tropical Diseases in London, UK.

http://www.scidev.net/global/health/multimedia/mass-media-save-lives-the-evidence.html

Do mass media save lives? The evidence is in

Journalists have a crucial role to play in creating inspirational and transformative narratives relating to the world’s complex water conflicts, specialists say in the first episode of a three-part podcast series on water conflict and cooperation. 

In this episode, special guests discuss their research on the role of the media in water diplomacy, which features in a new expert guide for journalists and policymakers launched by the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education.

Water conflicts, science and the media

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 

SciDev.Net

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks