An intimate encounter with the “kissing bug” might sound cute, but Chagas disease – to give it its official name - is a nightmare for the millions who are infected every year, says UNITAID. 

For this year’s World Chagas Day on Wednesday 14 April, the UN agency has high hopes that a tracing and treatment initiative involving several Latin American countries, will help protect hundreds of thousands. With the details, here’s UNITAID’s Mauricio Cysne, director of external relations, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

Horrific events have been unfolding in northern Mozambique in recent days, where thousands of people have fled gunmen who’ve attacked the town of Palma, located in Cabo Delgado province, reportedly killing dozens. 

According to UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),  youngsters have been separated from their parents, and every single one desperately needs help. 

UNICEF’s head of communications in Mozambique, Daniel Timme, spoke to UN News’s Daniel Johnson from an aid hub in the provincial capital, Pemba.

Nearly 700,000 people have fled “a cocktail of crisis” in the Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, where a three-year brutal insurgency has intensified amid grinding poverty, natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Monica Grayley spoke to Aboubacar Koulibaly, leader of an expert team from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) that is currently in Mozambique to increase support to people battered by the complex, multilayered crisis.

At least 15 people have died in a massive fire at a refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, home mainly to Rohingyas who fled neighbouring Myanmar, and 400 are still missing. 

That’s the latest on Tuesday from UN teams and refugee volunteers on the ground at Cox’s Bazaar, who need to rebuild quickly ahead of the upcoming monsoon, as UN Children’s Fund spokesperson James Elder, tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.