Gunmen in war-ravaged South Sudan have abducted at least 89 boys, some as young as 13, from their school in oil-rich Upper Nile State, the United Nations said on Saturday. From Rueters:
The boys were taken while doing their exams and the total number of kidnapped children could be “much higher”, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the abductions and the gunmen’s intentions were not clear, though in the past armed groups have forcibly recruited children before major offensives.
Conflict has been rife in South Sudan since December 2013 when fighting erupted in capital Juba between soldiers allied to President Salva Kiir and those loyal to his former deputy, Riek Machar.
At least 10,000 people have been killed and 1.5 million internally displaced. UNICEF said about 12,000 children have been recruited into armed groups since the outbreak of war.
The latest incident took place near Malakal, the capital of Upper Nile State, in a small village that has seen its population swell to about 90,000 due to a flood of internally displaced people.
“According to witnesses, armed soldiers surrounded the community and searched house by house. Boys older than 12 years of age were taken away by force,” UNICEF said in a statement.
The community where the raid took place is mostly made up from members of the Shilluk tribe, South Sudan’s third largest ethnic group after Kiir’s Dinkas and Machar’s Nuers. While the war in South Sudan has often pitted Dinkas against Nuers, Shilluks have largely stayed neutral.
—————————————-
Global Health and Development Beat
Drug-resistant malaria is on the cusp of re-emerging in India, scientists said in a study published Friday, after the strain was detected near the country’s border in Myanmar.
Saudi Arabia’s Health Ministry says two more people have died after contracting MERS, pushing the total number of deaths from the virus in the kingdom to 385.
The WHO announced that it had approved a rapid diagnostic test kit for Ebola that can provide results in 15 minutes and correctly identify 92% of patients infected by the disease.
ARVs given to people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi are scarce in the country’s hospitals putting at risk lives of millions of people, reports Malawi 24.
A top United Nations climate official, Rajendra Pachauri, has pulled out of a high-level meeting in Kenya next week, a spokesman said on Saturday, as Indian police investigate a sexual harassment complaint against him.
—————————————-
Buzzing in the Blogs
The New York Post reviews a new book exploring how AIDS emerged from Africa and made it around the world. An excerpt:
In Randy Shilts’ history of AIDS, “And the Band Played On,” he tells the story of an Air Canada steward named Gaëtan Dugas, who suffered from what Dugas called “gay cancer” and infected 40 people or more with HIV.
He was, Shilts wrote, “Patient Zero.”
Dugas, through his extensive travels and unrepentant, unprotected sex even after he was diagnosed, undoubtedly helped spread AIDS. But was he the man who brought the disease to America?
In the new book, “The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an African Rain Forest” (W.W. Norton), author David Quammen says no.
“Dugas himself was infected by some other human, presumably during a sexual encounter — and not in Africa . . . somewhere closer to home,” Quammen writes. “As evidence now shows, HIV had already arrived in North America when Gaëtan Dugas was a virginal adolescent.”
Using molecular genetics, researchers have now traced the exact strain of HIV that became a pandemic — HIV-1, Group M, Subtype B — to its original source.
Amazingly, through examination of genetic samples from humans and chimps, Quammen reveals scientists have found exactly when and where AIDS started — even a probable theory as to how.
—————————————-
By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
Subscribe to receive the Daily Impact in your inbox each morning!
Have a news or story tip? Email us at [email protected].
Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
