A city in central India has elected the country’s first transgender mayor, nine months after a court ruled that transgender be recognized as a legal third gender, local media reported. From the Thompson Reuters Foundation:
Madhu Kinnar, 35, won the mayoral election in Raigarh in the mineral-rich state of Chhattisgarh on Sunday, beating her opponent from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by more than 4,500 votes, the Press Trust of India reported in a story published on the news web site Firstpost.com.
Television images showed a sari-clad Kinnar, with a large red bindi on her forehead, greeting supporters who placed marigold garlands around her neck.
Kinnar – who is from the Dalit or “low caste” community and used to earn a living singing and dancing in trains – said that she was overwhelmed by her election.
“People have shown faith in me. I consider this win as love and blessings of people for me. I’ll put in my best efforts to accomplish their dreams,” Kinnar was quoted as saying.
“It was the public support that encouraged me to enter the poll fray for the first time and because of their support only, I emerged as the winner.”
Activists say there are hundreds of thousands of transgender people in India, but because they were not legally recognized, they faced ostracism, discrimination, abuse and forced prostitution.
Last April, India’s Supreme Court recognized transgender as a legal third gender and called on the government to ensure their equal treatment.
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Global Health and Development Beat
The World Health Organization recently called for 900 more epidemiologists to join the battle against Ebola in West Africa. That’s triple the current number. Epidemiologists study the patterns of disease outbreaks to determine how they spread and where they may go next.
Ebola survivors in the three West African countries worst hit by the epidemic will share their stories through a mobile application to be launched on Monday, in a UNICEF-backed campaign to inform and fight stigma around the disease.
Researchers found that cholera stabs and kills nearby bacteria – even those of the same strain – using a spring-loaded spear-like weapon. The bacterium then takes the DNA of its victim, allowing it to spread further throughout its host.
A clinical trial on an antibiotic produced by Cempra showed positive results against pneumonia, reports the drug company.
Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Care completed spraying 47 districts around the country to prevent a major outbreak of malaria, an official has said to The Standard.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Americans need to start caring about the rise of drug-resistant TB in places like India, says Patrick Adams in the New York Times. He writes:
In October, the W.H.O. reported that improved data collection had revealed an epidemic significantly larger than previously estimated: In 2013, nine million people developed active tuberculosis, and of those, nearly half a million were infected with multidrug-resistant strains. Indonesia, home to the world’s fifth-highest number of tuberculosis cases, is expected to publish its own prevalence survey soon; experts believe those figures will only add to the global burden.
The White House should view these trends with alarm. After all, drug-resistant tuberculosis is a threat to people everywhere, including in the United States. An outbreak in New York City that started in the late ’80s and involved drug-resistant strains cost at least $1 billion to quell. Given that caring for a single case of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis can run more than half a million dollars, a similar outbreak today could impose crippling burdens on health departments at the front lines of the nation’s defense. And the United States almost certainly underestimates its vulnerability.
Despite congressional calls to increase tuberculosis funding for the current year, President Obama proposed a 19 percent cut to the global tuberculosis budget of the United States Agency for International Development, which would put tuberculosis funding below $200 million for the first time in five years. The spending bill recently passed by Congress rejected those cuts and maintained level funding, at $236 million. That is still far below the $400 million per year public health advocates say is needed to combat the world’s leading curable killer.
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Capital Events
A slow start to the new year with DC events. Things pick up soon!
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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