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Because acting quickly and effectively during major disasters often means the difference between life and death on a large scale, the federal government is looking for ways to improve preparedness and emergency response systems across the country. As part of this effort, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded $8.

 The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is to begin delivering emergency supplies of a highly nutritious, peanut-based food to Somalia in a bid to combat the growing threat of severe malnutrition amongst children in the war-ravaged nation.

Oxfam has today (World Food Day, October 16th) launched a massive fundraising appeal to tackle the impact of rising world food prices, which have pushed an extra 119 million people into hunger, taking the global total to nearly 1 billion.

In an era of intense fluctuation in weather and climate patterns, the cost and availability of insurance are increasingly urgent issues - as the recent $46 billion insured losses from Hurricane Katrina and the $10 billion estimated damage from Hurricane Ike highlight.

Dartmouth researchers with the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research are preparing to visit the Galveston, Texas area on their first field mission in early November to study the impact of Hurricane Ike, which hit in late September.

Three university students have edged out fierce competition, including a professional filmmaker, to win the first-ever YouTube video contest on hunger, which has attracted more than half a million views from people all over the world.

Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, people still speculate over causes of the destruction of the city’s floodwall system. A new article in the fall issue of American Entomologist (Vol. 54, No. 3) suggests that Formosan subterranean termites played a large role.

New York - On October 18, 2008, Parkway Hospital, in conjunction with St. John’s Hospital of Queens and Mary Immaculate Hospital, will coordinate a drill that will test hospitals and first responders’ ability to deal with a mass casualty incident involving a radiation dispersal device, otherwise known as a ‘dirty bomb’.

The health care dollars that are spent in resource-poor nations historically have been directed toward the use of medicines to treat long-term, chronic conditions and communicable diseases.

In the most volatile parts of North Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), violence has reached its highest levels in years while assistance is hardly reaching those most in need, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.