Jason Beaubien
Jason Beaubien is NPR's Global Health and Development Correspondent on the Science Desk.
In this role, he reports on a range of issues across the world. He's covered the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, mass cataract surgeries in Ethiopia, abortion in El Salvador, poisonous gold mines in Nigeria, drug-resistant malaria in Myanmar and tuberculosis in Tajikistan. He was part of a team of reporters at NPR that won a Peabody Award in 2015 for their extensive coverage of the West Africa Ebola outbreak. His current beat also examines development issues including why Niger has the highest birth rate in the world, can private schools serve some of the poorest kids on the planet and the links between obesity and economic growth.
Prior to becoming the Global Health and Development Correspondent in 2012, Beaubien spent four years based in Mexico City covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In that role, Beaubien filed stories on politics in Cuba, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the FMLN victory in El Salvador, the world's richest man and Mexico's brutal drug war.
For his first multi-part series as the Mexico City correspondent, Beaubien drove the length of the U.S./Mexico border making a point to touch his toes in both oceans. The stories chronicled the economic, social and political changes along the violent frontier.
In 2002, Beaubien joined NPR after volunteering to cover a coup attempt in the Ivory Coast. Over the next four years, Beaubien worked as a foreign correspondent in sub-Saharan Africa, visiting 27 countries on the continent. His reporting ranged from poverty on the world's poorest continent, the HIV in the epicenter of the epidemic, and the all-night a cappella contests in South Africa, to Afro-pop stars in Nigeria and a trial of white mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea.
During this time, he covered the famines and wars of Africa, as well as inspiring preachers and Nobel laureates. Beaubien was one of the first journalists to report on the huge exodus of people out of Sudan's Darfur region into Chad, as villagers fled some of the initial attacks by the Janjawid. He reported extensively on the steady deterioration of Zimbabwe and still has a collection of worthless Zimbabwean currency.
In 2006, Beaubien was awarded a Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan to study the relationship between the developed and the developing world.
Beaubien grew up in Maine, started his radio career as an intern at NPR Member Station KQED in San Francisco and worked at WBUR in Boston before joining NPR.
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After years of progress in reducing the number of annual deaths from tuberculosis, the number of cases of the infectious respiratory disease went up in 2020. -
The World Health Organization is setting up a new committee to investigate the origins of the current pandemic and potential outbreaks in the future.
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The WHO has given the green light to the first malaria vaccine. Thousands of people are afflicted by malaria every year in sub Saharan Africa. Young children are especially vulnerable to the disease.
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It's also the first vaccine against a parasitic disease in humans. But there are issues to consider, from its rate of effectiveness to the dosage schedule.
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The World Health Organization has given approval for the world's first malaria vaccine. Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, with at least half being children under age 5.
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Of 12 sitting heads of state implicated in the Pandora Papers, most are from low- or middle-income countries. So are many other politicians and elites named in the leaked documents.
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The FDA is set to rule on Pfizer boosters on Friday. Some scientists say they aren't needed for healthy people and the doses would more helpful for the unvaccinated in countries with limited supplies.
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Nearly a week after an earthquake that has left more than 2,000 people dead, Haiti is still reeling and aid groups are struggling to respond.
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The soccer stadium in the Haitian seaside town of Les Cayes is now a tent city of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the earthquake. Aid continues to arrive, but slowly.
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Relief supplies are reaching the quake zone, but slowly. Health care workers are exhausted, some at their jobs 24 hours a day as Haiti struggles to care for those affected by the 7.2 magnitude quake.
