Scientists have discovered that leukemia in children is frequently engaged by common infections and in some cases may be prevented. According to the journal Nature, in the United Kingdom Childhood Cancer Study researchers presented a link to leukemia in children associated with viruses like measles in the 1920's and in the 1970's found that viruses significantly increased the onset of leukemia in cats and cattle. Mel Greaves of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said that with the normal immune system process, infections activate a multiplication of white blood cells in the bone marrow, and in children genetically susceptible to leukemia, an infection can cause an uncontrolled multiplication of those cells. Exposure to pathogen's through vaccine in the first year of the child's life may help trigger the immune system to somehow prevent the overflow. Leukemia accounts for a third of all cancers in children under the age of 15 and is treated with chemotherapy. The goal of chemo is the destruction of abnormal, cancerous cells. It commonly attacks infants within the first two to four years after birth. Roughly 80 percent of children affected with leukemia survive the first 5 years after diagnosis

Geneva (AHN)-On Thursday the World Health Organization said that the situation for pregnant mothers and babies had worsened since the 1990s in dozens of countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite defying global advances in medicine one woman still dies every minute in pregnancy or childbirth, while each 60 seconds 20 young children are victims to easily preventable disease. WHO officials believe that some countries in Africa could take another 150 years to reach U.N. targets for reducing maternal mortality. Pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, AIDS and neonatal ailments were the main killers of children under five. The toll includes more than four million newborns who die before they are a month old, but not some 3.3 million stillbirths annually. "The lifetime risk for a woman to lose a newborn baby is now 1 in 5 in Africa, compared with 1 in 125 in more developed countries," the report said. WHO determined that an additional $9 billion is required for each year of the next decade to reach the U.N. Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters by the target date of 2015