Tourism And Poverty Reduction: A Guardian Focus podcast examines whether tourism can promote development (Bunting/Sale/Provost, 4/28).

African Nations Rightly Proceed With DDT Plans: “Environmental activists inside and outside UNEP love to hate DDT and will seemingly stop at nothing to ensure it is never produced or used. But there is a macabre irony in their anti-DDT campaigns. With all the technological advancement of the 21st century that now ensures the average person born today will live longer than at any time in human history, SADC will be producing a chemical first synthesized in the 1800s. It is due to decades of anti-insecticides campaigning that there has not been any real investment, public or private, in the search for true replacements of DDT. SADC is doing the right thing for the health and welfare of its citizens,” Roger Bate, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, write in AEI’s journal “The American” (4/28).

Walk For Water: In a post on the State Department’s “DipNote” blog, Maria Otero, the under secretary of State for democracy and global affairs, writes about State’s first ever six-kilometer “Walk for Water,” to highlight the “typical distance that a woman in the developing world walks every day to collect water.” According to Otero, “As nurturers and homemakers, women bear the overwhelming responsibility of finding and collecting water for their families. … often the water that these women carry for many miles is not even safe to drink. Dirty water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene kill over 5,000 people every day, mostly children” (4/27).

Infographic Depicts Global Polio Spending: The image, from a collaboration between GOOD magazine and Kiss Me I’m Polish, visually shows how investments in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is preventing cases of the disease and saving money (4/27).

Polio Immunization Campaign Launched In Southern Sudan: USAID, the government of southern Sudan (GOSS) and other partners recently launched a polio vaccination campaign in the country, according to a post on USAID’s “Impact blog.” At the launch of the campaign, USAID/Sudan Mission Director William Hammink said, “Due to the efforts of the GOSS, development partners, and people of southern Sudan, the outbreak that re-emerged in South Sudan in 2008 has been halted” (Stephens, 4/27).

Run-Down Of The WHO Forum On NCDs: A post on the Global Health Council’s “Blog 4 Global Health” provides a summary of the recent forum in Moscow. “The meeting included six concurrent sessions examining the role that different stakeholder groups can play, such as the private sector, food and beverage companies, health professionals and health sector, civil society (including faith-based organizations), researchers and academia, and whole-of-governments,” according to the post, which also notes video of the conference is available online (4/27).

NTDs In Catholic Areas: In light of recent research showing that about one-quarter of the most common neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and almost all cases of Chagas disease occur in the Catholic majority countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Peter Hotez of the Sabin Vaccine Institute writes that “major Catholic charities and perhaps even the Catholic Church has a unique opportunity to promote NTD control in several of the 22 most endemic Catholic majority countries.” In the PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases editorial, he highlights how charities and the church could be more involved (4/26).

U.S. Government Groups Enter Into Collaborative Effort To Fight Malaria In Africa: Peace Corps, the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), CDC and USAID are working together “to help African governments further reduce the burden of malaria in 14 countries across sub-Saharan African where Peace Corps and PMI have a presence,” according to a USAID press release (4/26).

Council On Foreign Relations Papers On Family Planning, Population: CFR has released several reports on family planning and population, including Family Planning and U.S. Foreign Policy, Family Planning and Reproductive Health, Population and Environment Connections, Family Planning as a Strategic Focus of U.S. Foreign Policy, and Family Planning and Economic Growth (April 2011).

Recommendations For Effective U.S. Development Policy: The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network recently updated its agenda for reform. It includes suggestions for the Obama administration and Congress aimed at improving development policy. One recommendation is to ensure “assistance is responsive to local priorities and supportive of local policy reforms that will lead to sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty” (April 2011).