5th Meeting of BRICS Ministers of Education Beijing, July 5, 2017 BEIJING DECLARATION ON EDUCATION We, the BRICS Ministers of Education and assigned representatives of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of South Africa, Having met in Beijing, the People's Republic of China on July 4th and 5th, 2017 to discuss education reforms, approaches to promoting equity in education and fostering quality education, strengthening BRICS collaboration in the field of education, and exchange of students and scholars and teaching faculty among BRICS Member States; Recalling Brasilia Declaration on March 2nd, 2015, Moscow Declaration on November 18th, 2015 and New Delhi Declaration on September 30th, 2016; Committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4)-Education 2030 which aims to "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all" that was set within The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; Recognizing the significance of collaboration in the field of education for enhancing the overall partnership among BRICS Member States and enhancing people to people exchanges to a higher level; Realizing that the scale of education development in BRICS Member States is expanding rapidly, and that all Member States face common challenges in promoting educational equity, accessibility and in improving the quality of education; Considering that higher education contributes to the development of high-level human resources and intellectual support for the economic and social development, studies of BRICS Member States will enhance the mutual understanding between each Member State; and Recognizing that the mobility of faculty and students, and sharing of information among the Member States is of great importance for the implementation of the consensus arrived at the Meetings of BRICS Ministers of Education; For ensuring coordinated and deeper cooperation among the Member States, hereby declare to: 1. Reiterate support for the BRICS Network University (NU) to collaborate in the fields of education, research and innovation. Encourage universities to participate in the BRICS University League. 2. Increase cultural cooperation through language education and multilingualism to promote mutual understanding of the history and culture of BRICS Member States. 3. Undertake initiatives to promote professionalization of academics in higher education through the BRICS Network University as a focus of future education development. 4. Encourage more teachers and educational administrators to learn from experiences of other countries in improving teacher quality and performance, and promoting the development of education through international exchanges. 5. Strengthen cooperation in the field of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), share ideas and experiences in the development of vocational educators, and develop projects that are of common interests to BRICS Member States. 6. Recognize the importance of BRICS Think Tanks Council (BTTC),BRICS Network University as well as other BRICS initiatives, and encourage the streamlining of mechanisms for their closer cooperation to ensure the alignment of their work. 7. Emphasize the importance of streamlining the cooperation among educational think tanks and education researchers, and welcome China's invitation to host a conference to explore possible cooperation among the various entities in BRICS Member States. 8. Encourage the organization of "youth winter/summer camps" to reinforce communication and cultural exchanges among the young generation from BRICS Member States. 9. Encourage Member States to expand the number of scholarship opportunities to students across BRICS Member States. 10. Share the experiences and practices in achieving the SDG4-Education 2030 targets in order to foster a more favorable policy environment, adopt effective practices, andadvocate for globaleducationalpolicies that take into accountthe common concerns and priorities of the BRICS Member States. 11. Encourage the participation in the 3rd BRICS NU Annual Conference to be held in 2018, in Cape Town, South Africa and in the BRICS Global Business and Innovation Conference to be held in September 2017, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, and the Republic of South Africa extend their appreciation to the government of the People's Republic of China for hosting the 5thMeeting of BRICS Ministers of Education. The English version of this Declaration has been signed on July 5th, 2017 in Beijing, People's Republic of China. The Declaration has been executed in five (5) original copies, each copy being equally authentic and valid. 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Organism grown inside mosquitoes' bodies stops development of infectious parasite Chinese scientists may have found a way to stop mosquitoes from spreading malaria, which kills one child every two minutes according to the World Health Organization. Malaria affects between 200 and 300 million people worldwide every year according to the WHO. Infection is caused by Plasmodium, a parasite that is transmitted through mosquito bites. A symbiotic bacterium that grows inside the bodies of mosquitoes was discovered by a team at the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology in Shanghai, and was genetically modified to carry anti-malaria genes that arrest the development of the parasites in the insects' intestinal tracts. "The bacteria proliferate rapidly in the intestinal tracts of mosquitoes after they take in human blood and thus the ability to inhibit the development of the parasites will increase dramatically," said Wang Sibao, head of the research team at the institute, a branch of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. More important, the bacteria can be spread among mosquitoes quickly and widely during mating, and can be passed on to the next generation. "When mosquitoes with such bacteria lay eggs in water, bacteria stuck to the surface of their eggs will propagate in the water and be ingested by the hatched larvae of the other mosquitoes, meaning that the capability of inhibiting the spread of the disease can be passed to other mosquitoes rapidly," Wang said. A paper about the research team's findings was published on the website of Science, an international journal, on Friday. The authors demonstrated that introducing 5 percent of male or female mosquitoes colonized with the symbiotic bacteria was sufficient for the bacteria to spread through the population and colonize 100 percent of mosquitoes for three subsequent generations, according to one peer review. Another peer review said: "One of the bottlenecks of paratransgenesis has been the inability to maintain the bacteria in the insect for a prolonged period of time and, importantly, to spread the bacteria to the offspring. In this work, Wang showed that a specific bacterium found in mosquitoes can stay in the insect for a long period of time and be easily propagated to other mosquitoes." Wang said laboratory tests have been completed, and the team will conduct field experiments in some African countries. The research may bring new insight to approaches for inhibiting the spread of other infectious diseases, such as dengue fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, according to the institute. According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, 3,189 Chinese citizens contracted malaria last year. It is increasingly difficult to prevent and fight the disease due to globalization. Only three of the cases last year were contracted locally. [email protected] (China Daily 10/09/2017 page5)
