Malgorzata Stawecka interviews HAN DEMIN, the superintendent of Beijing Tongren Hospital and recipient of the 2012 South-South Award

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 2012 (IPS) – For millions of people in developing countries, having cataracts means permanently impaired vision or even blindness. While treatment can fix the problem, the cost is well beyond most sufferers reach.

Courtesy of Han Demin.

But thanks to a group of Chinese medics, this expensive surgery is now becoming more widely available. Love is borderless this motto guides Dr. Han Demin in his humanitarian efforts to improve the lives of thousands of people around the world.

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Lindiwe Dlamini nurses her six-week-old baby boy. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

MBABANE, Jan 7 2014 (IPS) – Smiling as she breastfeeds her six-week-old baby boy, Lindiwe Dlamini, 38, is optimistic about his future.

Dlamini, who is HIV-positive, is determined that her baby will not be infected. The mother of three – who conceived her first two children when she was HIV-negative – was on antiretroviral therapy (ART) when she delivered a healthy boy in November.

Now she is feeding him on breast milk and nothing else for six months – advice she received during antenatal care. She knows mother’s milk is more nutritious and carries antibodies.

“Bre…

Image courtesy of the World Federation for Mental Health. Source: Twitter @WMHDay

GENEVA, Oct 9 2018 – Today, on World Mental Health Day, IOM would like to honour all the migrants who stand strong in the face of adversity and uphold human rights and values. Migration should be a positive experience, but often isn’t. As people move in search of opportunity, or in pursuit of new adventures, too often their journeys are characterized by insecurity and sometimes physical danger, especially for those who are pushed to leave their countries of origin due to abuse or human rights violations that harm their mental health.

Studies show there is persistently high mental health vu…

Workers during the pandemic, both frontline and those who worked from home reported high levels of stress. Credit: John Alvin Merin / Unsplash

NEW YORK, Jun 22 2021 (IPS) – For Dr Farzana Khan, a frontline worker and a second-generation immigrant from Pakistan living in California, social media helped her connect and realign herself during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Khan has not seen her family for more than six months, she said in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).

I was working extra hours and saw death up close. It was nerve-wracking to see my patients at this stage. It has been over six months that I have not seen my fa…

The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation will be hosted by Rwanda. It is part of the African Development Bank’s commitment to spend at least USD 3 billion over the next ten years to …

SINGAPORE, Jun 9 2020 – Politics have exacerbated the already severe pains that the raging COVID Pandemic have been inflicting on the global population. The spread of Coronavirus coincided with three major developments in the global arena. First was the end of what Charles Krauthammer, the American neo-conservative guru had called, as the title of his book on that subject suggested, America’s “Unipolar Moment”. This was the period, since the implosion of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, when the United states was the only pre-dominant superpower that ruled the roost in the global arena. Though China was rising in the meantime, politically, economically and militarily, it was still coy about it, conforming to the Deng Xia0ping counsel to “hide its capabilities and bide its ti…