Linda Poon

Liberia is nearing a milestone. On May 9, its Ebola outbreak will be officially declared over, assuming no new cases between now and then.

But what happens when an outbreak of Ebola ends?

Dr. Peter Piot, the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the

In his home in Lahore, Pakistan, Saleem Khan holds up his late father's violin. There are no strings, the wood is scratched and the bridge is missing.

"There was a time when people used to come to Lahore from all over the world to hear its musicians," the 65-year-old violinist ...

"One day your tragic ordeal will end, you will be reunited with your families and friends, and you will have the chance to finish the education you courageously sought," Malala Yousafzai said Monday to the girls in Nigeria who have been missing for a year.

Last April, Boko Haram abducted ...

After a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, help poured in from the U.S. Doctors came to battle the cholera epidemic, agencies handed out food, and nonprofits provided shelter.

And then there were plumbers.

The earthquake had triggered a water crisis in a country where millions already lacked ...

At first the tiny country of Timor-Leste reminded Gena Barnabee of being in the U.S. It had movie theaters, malls and plenty of roads.

Then Barnabee left the capital city. And the scenery changed dramatically.

Mountains and hills stretch for miles and miles in the rural southern part of ...

Back in 2011 when I was a student at the University of Maryland in College Park I once noticed a massive pile of trash in front of a dining hall. A closer look revealed that it was mostly food — a half-eaten sandwich, a browning apple and what appeared to ...

Some recall getting burned. Others say they've been strangled or attacked by dogs. Many suffer from depression and anxiety. These are only a small sampling of what tens of millions modern slaves endure daily, researchers in London reported Wednesday.

The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, is the ...

Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Snow White all peer from behind as an elderly Tibetan woman sits in front of the camera. "Do you have any other background?" asks the man who led her to her seat.

"Of course, bring the catalogue," says the weary photographer. He's already taken dozens ...

As most people know, mushrooms love dark places. You can find them growing in the dim recesses of forests or at the foot of old trees. But is that where we get most of the mushrooms that end up in our hearty risottos and juicy portabella sandwiches?

You would be ...

Every day, 17-year-old Kaday goes to school by turning on the radio.

She's one of the million school-age children in Sierra Leone who've had no classroom to go to since July. That's when the government closed all schools to curb the spread of Ebola.

But that doesn't mean the kids ...

Valentine's Day isn't just about candy hearts and kisses — at least not for global activists. For them, Feb. 14 is V-Day, the international day of ending violence against women and girls.

Started in 1998 by Eve Ensler, the creator of the play The Vagina Monologues, the V-Day movement ...

Senegal is full of tourist attractions: sandy beaches, historic buildings, religious sites. But when historian Donna Patterson visits, she heads to the drugstore.

"Pharmacies are the lens [through] which I view Senegal," she says. A historian of African medicine at Wellesley College, Patterson explores how Senegalese pharmacies became "the ...

Across the world, a child's survival is a lot like drawing a lottery ticket. Factors based purely on chance — where a child is born, how wealthy his or her family is and what's the ethnic background — can determine if a child lives past age 5.

That's the conclusion ...

The closer you get to zero, the harder the job."

That's according to Dr. David Nabarro, who heads the U.N.'s effort against Ebola. In a new report, the agency says that while health workers have been making progress in containing the outbreak in West Africa, it will take ...

Been there. And there. And there, too.

Chris Guillebeau's travels began in 2002, when he was an aid worker in Sierra Leone, and ended in Norway in 2013. Along the way, he's been to every single U.N. recognized country in the world: a grand total of 193.

Guillebeau, an adventurer ...

A new study shows that when it comes to the classroom, girls rule.

They outperform boys in math, science and reading in 70 percent of the 70-plus countries and regions surveyed by the Organization for Economic Development Cooperation and Development. Girls do better even in countries that rank low on ...

Two men are sparring on a wooded slope in Haiti. Each has one hand behind his back. From afar, it looks as if they're fencing. But instead of using swords, the men are wielding machetes.

Yes, you read that right. They are aiming machetes at each other.

The older man ...

Each year for the past six years, Bill and Melinda Gates have written a letter about how their foundation is trying to make the world a better place, how they're trying to improve health and education and end poverty. Their 2015 letter was published Wednesday on the foundation's blog. ...

The carts that garbage pickers wheel down the streets of Sao Paulo often look as if they came from the Museum of Funky Art. Colorful cartoon faces — with bulging eyes, flared nostrils and thick lips — peer from the sides of the metal and wooden carts.

Then there are ...

This week, albinos and so-called witch doctors have made headlines. A number of news outlets reported that Tanzania had announced a ban on these "witch doctors" to curb attacks on people with albinism.

That made us wonder: What, exactly, is a witch doctor? And why are people with albinism under ...