Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 13 2011 (IPS) – Famine-hollowed farmers watch trucks loaded with grain grown on their ancestral lands heading for the nearest port, destined to fill richer bellies in foreign lands. This scene has become all too common since the 2008 food crisis.

More than 100 billion dollars has been inve…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 26 2011 (IPS) – Burma s transition from an overt military rule to a civilian administration of retired generals is getting a shot in the arm from a former critic of the junta the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The Fund that left the South-East Asian nation in protest more than five years ago is returning this year to Burma, or Myanmar. The move follows three agreements inked last November to finance two-year grants of up to 112.8 million dollars against the three killer diseases.

It marks an increase from the 98.4 million dollars that the Geneva-based humanitarian body had pledged during its first foray. The group pulled out in August 2005 citing political interference in its programmes.

Support for HIV/A…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2011 (IPS) – When the international community commemorates World Water Day next week, perhaps it should ponder the words of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who once remarked he does not expect people the world over to stop what they are doing and observe a moment of silence, come Mar. 22.

Water supplied by the military in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

But maybe they should, he added, considering the fact that every 20 seconds, a child dies fr…

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 21 2011 (IPS) – Will India, the world s biggest manufacturer of the pesticide endosulfan, and also the biggest victim of the toxic pesticide, persist with opposing its ban globally?
A coalition of health and environmental activists fears that the central government is preparing to oppose a ban at the Apr. 25 -29 fifth conference of the parties (CoP) to the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, or POPs Treaty , in Geneva.

We understand that the central government will continue to support endosulfan use, although India risks being isolated in Geneva, said Ravi Agarwal, director of Toxics Link, a participating member of the International POPs Elimination Network.

At the last review committee of the POPs Treaty in Oct…

Charles Mpaka

BLANTYRE, May 25 2011 (IPS) – In the shade of a leafy mango tree at the rural Chipho Health Centre in Thyolo, southern Malawi, Melifa Faison sits looking frequently down the road hoping to see an ambulance. Lying beside her is her 6-year-old daughter, weak with malaria.
The medical assistant has referred the child to a larger health centre 22 kilometres (km) away for proper treatment.

He (the medical assistant) says she will need to be put on a drip and they don t have the supplies, says Faison.

The centre does not have the first line drugs for malaria, the top killer of children in Malawi. This is Faison s second visit in 10 days. On the first visit her daughter was given painkillers.

I was informed there was no medicine (for malaria) …

Pam Johnson

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 2011 (IPS) – By 2015, women demanding family planning products and services in the developing world will likely reach 933 million, a terrific increase from the current 818 million women demanding access to these basic reproductive commodities.
In addition, according to the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), the number of family planning users will soar from 603 million to 709 million an increase of 64 million users across 66 developing countries, and 42 million spanning 89 middle-income countries by the middle of the decade.

The increased cost associated with this skyrocketing demand is an estimated 5.7 billion dollars per annum for both low- and middle-income countries including the expenses of procuring more contraceptive c…

Inaki Borda

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 2011 (IPS) – This year, tobacco use will kill nearly six million people. Of that number, 600,000 will die because of exposure to second- hand tobacco smoke.
If current trends continue, the annual death toll could rise to eight million by 2030, according to a by the World Health Organization (WHO), with more than 80 percent of the deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries

We have the means to prevent this needless tragedy. Political will is the key, Timothy O Leary, WHO communications officer, told IPS.

On Thursday, the WHO launched its third periodic report on the effects of tobacco, with a focus on the proliferation of smoking bans in work places, restaurants, bars and other indoor public places. It notes while t…

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 9 2011 (IPS) – Only six sub-Saharan African countries have failed to reduce the number of women dying in childbirth over the last two decades. High-spending South Africa is among them, with maternal mortality rates more than quadrupling since 1990. Human Rights Watch researcher Agnes Odhiambo says this is largely due to a lack of accountability.
Maternal mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole have been reduced by a quarter compared to 1990 levels. But the continent s most developed economy is moving in the opposite direction: South Africa s maternal mortality rate in 1990 was 150 per 100,000 live births; in its 2010 MDG progress report, the country reported this had risen to 625 per 100,000.

HIV is a big factor in maternal mortality i…

Kanya D’Almeida

WASHINGTON, Sep 14 2011 (IPS) – Kakenya Ntaiya was engaged at age five and would have been married by 13 if her mother had not insisted that she attend her small village school in Enoosaen, Kenya.
As she got older, Ntaiya made a bargain with her father that she would be circumcised only if he allowed her to finish high school, then negotiated with her village elders to be granted permission to travel to the United States for university.

It was in college that I learned for the first time that genital mutilation and cutting were illegal, that I had rights, that I had always had rights and there were people out there ready to defend them, Ntaiya told a group of human rights advocates in Washington D.C. Tuesday.

Ntaiya went on to found the Kakeny…

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 4 2011 (IPS) – News that the government of South Africa was inspired by Brazil s health system in setting up its own universal coverage scheme might meet with scepticism in this South American country.

Pediatrics waiting room at the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Agência Brasil Marcello Casal Jr/EBr

Sociologist Walkiria Dutra de Oliveira was one of the many Brazilians who had a negati…