Clinical trials are underway to test a new treatment for pregnant women, which could tackle some of the leading preventable causes of death for babies in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) have said.

A large number of pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with both malaria and sexually transmitted–reproductive tract infections (STIs – RTIs), according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Each year an estimated 25 million women in sub-Saharan Africa  are at high risk of malaria infection during pregnancy, the study said. Malarial infection heightens the risk of miscarriage, still births, or premature birth and death.

There are 880,000 stillbirths and 1.2 million newborn deaths each year in sub-Saharan Africa, many of which are linked to maternal infections in general , according to the study.

Almost four of every 10 women being treated in a health clinic in the region are infected with malaria, it said. Many women are also infected with such STIs and RTIs as syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia, trichomononiasis and bacterial vaginosis, according to the report.

Researchers from LSHTM are working as part of an international group conducting clinical trials of combined anti-malarial and antibiotic treatment that could prevent and treat malaria and STIs-RTIs in pregnancy at the same time.

Disconnected approaches to water security are hindering efforts to launch more effective talks on providing universal access to fresh water and sanitation, an expert said at an international conference this week.

The division between discussions on boosting access to water for the poor and those on the challenges of managing water as a resource was plain to see at the water security conference at Oxford University, according to Tom Slaymaker, a senior policy analyst at WaterAid.

“The dominant narrative on water security reflects rich-country concerns and we mustn’t forget that in developing countries huge amounts of people still lack basic facilities,” Slaymaker said.

Unless the two camps link up, solutions to complex challenges across the water sector are unlikely to be found soon, he said.

“On the one hand, we have climate scientists and water-resource modellers debating the risks attached to periodic extreme events such as floods and droughts,” Slaymaker told AlertNet. “On the other, we have development agencies concerned that over 2 million people continue to die every year due to a lack of access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation facilities.”

To bridge the gap, there is a need for more holistic ways of thinking about how to tackle water-related risks, Slaymaker said, citing David Grey, an Oxford University water policy professor.

The lives of 2.5 million people could be saved every year if governments committed to universal access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation, charity WaterAid has said.

Citing the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO), WaterAid said in a report that boosting access to clean water and sanitation could save people by reducing deaths from diarrhoea, malnutrition and related diseases.

Although the global Millennium Development Goal (MDG 7) water target to reduce by half the proportion of people living without safe water by 2015 has now been met, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and Oceania are lagging behind, WaterAid said.

At current rates of progress, the MDG 7 sanitation target to reduce by half the proportion of people living without access to an improved toilet by 2015 will be missed by a huge margin, the report said, adding that there are now more people in the world without sanitation than there were in 1990.

“It is unacceptable that 37 percent of the world’s population live without a toilet,” said Barbara Frost, WaterAid Britain’s chief executive. “The need for action is overwhelming.”

The MDGs are a framework of global targets set in 2000 by the United Nations to be met by 2015 to try and alleviate poverty.

Aid agencies and donors should develop a “tool box” for the use and distribution of cash transfers to improve effective aid delivery, according to a new report from the Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP).

Cash and voucher programmes are increasingly being used in regions where security problems interfere with the delivery of such traditional forms of aid as food.

An estimated 4 million people in the Horn of Africa are now receiving famine assistance via cash and voucher programmes from non-governmental charities and United Nations (U.N.) agencies, according to CaLP.

The study, titled “New Technologies in Cash Transfers and Humanitarian Assistance“, was conducted because cash and voucher programmes have become more common, partly due to easier access to electronic banking technology,  but there are no established standards.

The lack of industry-wide standards led researchers to investigate some of the benefits and problems associated with the process.

As part of a more standardised approach, an agency should be established to keep on top of advances in communication technology to be a point of reference for technology in times of crises, the report said.

Medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has opened a new emergency health referral centre in Haiti, which will celebrate its official launch on Wednesday in conjunction with Haiti’s health ministry.

The move is part of a much-needed campaign to improve conditions in a country where the vast majority of people live below the poverty line.

“MSF is now supporting the Ministry of Public Health and Population with 600 hospital beds in Haiti for emergency care,” said Gaëtan Drossart, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti.

“This is still far from adequate, but is nevertheless an advance.”

The surgical referral centre is the third such emergency treatment facility opened by MSF in the capital Port-au-Prince since a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the country in January 2010.

The quake killed about 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless.

The focus of a film calling for the capture of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony should have been on helping child victims instead, Amanda Weisbaum of non-governmental organisation War Child UK said on Wednesday.

The 30-minute film about Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who is accused of terrorising northern Uganda for more than 20 years, went viral on the Internet after it was released last month.

Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. He is accused of abducting children to use as fighters and sex slaves. So far, regional forces and foreign troops have been unable to capture Kony.

“Kony 2012″, made by charity group Invisible Children, has been viewed almost 87 million times on YouTube and almost 18 million times on Vimeo.

In the film, which has been criticised for inaccuracies, director Jason Russell juxtaposed shots of his son with suffering Ugandan children.

“The message is wrong, it’s not about Kony, it’s about the children and who is suffering within the areas that the LRA are in at this time,” Weisbaum said.

Easy access to hardcore pornography on the Web and a general lack of sex education for youth is changing attitudes about lovemaking, according to entrepreneur Cindy Gallop.

“I date younger men – they tend to be men in their 20s – and in dating younger men I encounter the real ramifications of the creeping ubiquity of hardcore pornography in our culture,” Gallop, 52, said during an interview at London Web Summit, where she gave a presentation.

“I can personally testify we now have an entire generation growing up that believes that what you see in hardcore porn is the way that you have sex.”

Gallop, who has a background in marketing and refers to herself as a “rampant feminist”, started the website MakeLoveNotPorn.com in 2009 as a platform to inspire discussion on the differences between lovemaking and pornography.

She plans to launch MakeLoveNotPorn.tv this year to expand the conversation.

“We live in a society where we all have sex but nobody ever talks about it,” Gallop said.

Jonathan Smith is trying to fight disease with facts, figures and – emotion.

Smith is using data-driven research as the basis for a documentary film he hopes will raise awareness about the plight of migrant workers in South African gold mines who, according to a 2011 report published in the American Journal of Public Health, contract tuberculosis (TB) at a rate 10 times higher than the populations from which they come.

Working conditions in the mines create a high-risk environment for TB transmission because of poor ventilation, exposure to silica dust and high HIV rates, said Smith, an epidemiology lecturer at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in an interview.

Migrant workers are sent home “to die” by the mining firms once they contract TB, spreading it into other parts of Africa already hard hit by the disease, he added.

The conditions in South African gold mines, which also cause silicosis, a lung disease which makes people highly susceptible to tuberculosis, have inspired a class action legal case, which was reported in a Reuters exclusive last week.

Smith was in London this week for a meeting at Westminster and spoke with AlertNet at the Strand Palace Hotel about his film “They Go to Die”, which he says he has funded so far by working two part-time jobs and with a grassroots kickstarter campaign, which raised about $15,000.

Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy describes the impact of the February 22 shelling of the Baba Amr district in the Syrian city of Homs. Conroy escaped after suffering leg injuries.

Nothing prepared me for what we saw in Baba Amr – Paul Conroy (mp3)

The bombardment killed U.S. journalist Marie Colvin, French photographer Remi Ochlik and seriously injured French journalist Edith Bouvier.

Conroy spoke at an event hosted by the International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW) on Tuesday in London.

INEW released a study this week, which showed that civilians accounted for 71 percent of people killed and injured by explosive weapons in 2011.

LONDON (AlertNet) – Civilians accounted for 71 percent of people killed and injured by explosive weapons in 2011, with most of such casualties taking place in Iraq, according to a report released on Tuesday.

At least 21,499 civilians were reported killed or injured over a 12-month period in 68 countries and territories, according to data gathered from news sources on 2,522 incidents of explosive violence, the report by non-profit group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said.

More than 18,000 of the civilian casualties were reported in populated areas, the report said.

Of all casualties recorded in populated areas, 84 percent were civilians, according to the group, which is a member of non-governmental organisation International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW).

Casualties recorded in the report were caused by such conventional military explosive weapons as mortars, rockets, artillery and such improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as car and suicide bombs.

More than half of all recorded civilian casualties caused by explosive devices were the result of IEDs, used mostly by non-state armed groups, it added.