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World News in Brief: Education suffers amid DR Congo violence, WHO greenlights RSV vaccines, more hurricanes ahead for Haiti

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According to UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, more than 290 schools have been damaged or destroyed in Ituri this year alone, bringing the total number of out-of-school children in the province to over 1.3 million.

Protection crisis

Between January and April 2025, a surge in violence displaced more than 100,000 people – half of them children. During this period, reported cases of abduction, maiming, sexual violence, and the recruitment and use of children by armed groups rose by 32 per cent compared to the same timeframe last year.

John Adbor, UNICEF’s representative in the DRC, referred to the situation as a “protection crisis”, stating: “Violence and conflict are shattering children’s right to learn – putting them at far greater risk of being recruited by armed groups, exploited, and abused.”

“The needs are immense, and our resources are not enough,” Mr. Adbor added, referring to UNICEF’s emergency response in the region.

With more than 1.8 million conflict-affected children now out of school across the DRC, UNICEF is prioritising mental health and psychosocial support through child-friendly spaces, reintegration of children formerly associated with armed groups, and treatment for acute malnutrition.

WHO approves two new vaccines to protect infants from RSV

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of severe lung infections in young children globally, resulting in approximately 100,000 deaths each year among children under the age of five.

Alarmingly, 97 per cent of these deaths occur in low and middle-income countries.

Although RSV can infect people of all ages, “it is especially harmful to infants, particularly those born prematurely,” said Kate O’Brien from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Around half of all RSV-related deaths occur in babies younger than six months.

New immunisation products

On Friday, WHO issued recommendations for two new immunisation tools: a maternal vaccine, administered to pregnant women in their third trimester to protect their newborns; and a long-acting antibody injection for infants, which begins to protect within a week of administration and lasts for at least five months.

Considering the global burden of severe RSV illness in infants, WHO recommends  that all countries adopt either the maternal vaccine or the antibody injection as part of their national immunisation strategies.

“These RSV immunisation products can transform the fight against severe RSV disease, dramatically reduce hospitalisations and deaths, and ultimately save many infant lives worldwide,” said Ms O’Brien.

Dire hurricane forecasts compound Haiti woes

UN humanitarians have raised alarm over Haiti’s heightened vulnerability to natural disasters, warning that the country’s limited capacity to respond could be severely tested during the 2025 hurricane season – forecast to be significantly more intense than average across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Rubbish burns on the coast of Haiti.

Rubbish burns on the coast of Haiti.

Running from June to November, the upcoming season poses a serious threat to the impoverished island nation, where economic crisis, ongoing gang-related violence and rampant insecurity have already displaced over one million people.

Displacement sites at risk

More than 200,000 people are currently living in displacement sites across the country, many of which are situated in flood-prone areas.

Lacking proper shelter, drainage and sanitation, these camps “leave families acutely vulnerable to storms,” said UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is working with national authorities and humanitarian partners to prepare for the hurricane season. Ongoing efforts include contingency planning, mapping of high-risk areas – particularly displacement sites – and strengthening early warning systems.

However, humanitarian access remains limited, and preparedness is severely hindered by the lack of pre-positioned supplies throughout the country.

This is a “direct consequence of underfunding,” said Mr. Dujarric, adding that “funding remains a major obstacle” to the UN’s emergency response in Haiti.

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Now go for painless tattoos that can be self-administered, say Researchers

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Instead of sitting in a tattoo chair for hours enduring painful punctures, imagine getting tattooed by a skin patch containing microscopic needles. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed low-cost, painless, and bloodless tattoos that can be self-administered and have many applications, from medical alerts to tracking neutered animals to cosmetics.

“We’ve miniaturized the needle so that it’s painless, but still effectively deposits tattoo ink in the skin,” said Mark Prausnitz, principal investigator on the paper. “This could be a way not only to make medical tattoos more accessible, but also to create new opportunities for cosmetic tattoos because of the ease of administration.”

Tattoos are used in medicine to cover up scars, guide repeated cancer radiation treatments, or restore nipples after breast surgery. Tattoos also can be used instead of bracelets as medical alerts to communicate serious medical conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy, or allergies.

Various cosmetic products using microneedles are already on the market — mostly for anti-aging — but developing microneedle technology for tattoos is new. Prausnitz, a veteran in this area, has studied microneedle patches for years to painlessly administer drugs and vaccines to the skin without the need for hypodermic needles.

tattoo/en.wikipedia.org

“We saw this as an opportunity to leverage our work on microneedle technology to make tattoos more accessible,” Prausnitz said. “While some people are willing to accept the pain and time required for a tattoo, we thought others might prefer a tattoo that is simply pressed onto the skin and does not hurt.”

Transforming Tattooing

Tattoos typically use large needles to puncture repeatedly into the skin to get a good image, a time-consuming and painful process. The Georgia Tech team has developed microneedles that are smaller than a grain of sand and are made of tattoo ink encased in a dissolvable matrix.

“Because the microneedles are made of tattoo ink, they deposit the ink in the skin very efficiently,” said Li, the lead author of the study.

In this way, the microneedles can be pressed into the skin just once and then dissolve, leaving the ink in the skin after a few minutes without bleeding.

Tattooing Technique

Although most microneedle patches for pharmaceuticals or cosmetics have dozens or hundreds of microneedles arranged in a square or circle, microneedle patch tattoos imprint a design that can include letters, numbers, symbols, and images. By arranging the microneedles in a specific pattern, each microneedle acts like a pixel to create a tattoo image in any shape or pattern.

The researchers start with a mold containing microneedles in a pattern that forms an image. They fill the microneedles in the mold with tattoo ink and add a patch backing for convenient handling. The resulting patch is then applied to the skin for a few minutes, during which time the microneedles dissolve and release the tattoo ink. Tattoo inks of various colors can be incorporated into the microneedles, including black-light ink that can only be seen when illuminated with ultraviolet light.

Prausnitz’s lab has been researching microneedles for vaccine delivery for years and realized they could be equally applicable to tattoos. With support from the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs, Prausnitz’s team started working on tattoos to identify spayed and neutered pets, but then realized the technology could be effective for people, too.

The tattoos were also designed with privacy in mind. The researchers even created patches sensitive to environmental factors such as light or temperature changes, where the tattoo will only appear with ultraviolet light or higher temperatures. This provides patients with privacy, revealing the tattoo only when desired.

A magnified view of a microneedle patch with green tattoo ink/photo:Georgia Tech

The study showed that the tattoos could last for at least a year and are likely to be permanent, which also makes them viable cosmetic options for people who want an aesthetic tattoo without risk of infection or the pain associated with traditional tattoos. Microneedle tattoos could alternatively be loaded with temporary tattoo ink to address short-term needs in medicine and cosmetics.

Microneedle patch tattoos can also be used to encode information in the skin of animals. Rather than clipping the ear or applying an ear tag to animals to indicate sterilization status, a painless and discreet tattoo can be applied instead.

“The goal isn’t to replace all tattoos, which are often works of beauty created by tattoo artists,” Prausnitz said. “Our goal is to create new opportunities for patients, pets, and people who want a painless tattoo that can be easily administered.”