Patricia Grogg interviews scientist CONCEPCIÓN CAMPA, director of Cuba’s Finlay Institute

HAVANA, Sep 7 2010 (IPS) – Even today, many years after it was proved effective, the Cuban vaccine against meningitis B is still ignored by industrialised countries, whose medical literature usually states there is no immunisation against that strain of the disease.

Above all, we are working for the good of human health, says Concepción Campa. Credit: Patricia Grogg/IP…

BULAWAYO , Sep 30 2010 (IPS) – Judith Sikhosana recently gave birth to a healthy baby boy. And while she has strictly followed the advice of health workers about the post-natal care for her child, there is one thing she is yet to understand: why nurses want her baby to be circumcised.
I have been advised about the benefits of circumcision for my baby concerning HIV, but he is just a child. I should not be thinking about things like that, said Sikhosana about her four-month-old son.

Sikhosana said she has not met any mothers who had their babies circumcised and she does not want to be a pioneer . I will see as time goes, she said, as she chatted among other new mothers who nodded in agreement.

Nurses in Bulawayo’s high density council clinics say Sikhosana’s res…

Patricia Grogg*

HAVANA, Oct 25 2010 (IPS) – The risk of meningitis outbreaks rises during the dry season December to June in some 20 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Meningitis in the region is too often deadly, though the disease can be prevented with vaccination.

A technician in a Finlay Institute lab producing meningitis vaccines for Africa. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Nana Diallo, 45, has her children vaccinated whenever possible. It s one o…

Soumaïla T. Diarra

BAMAKO, Nov 27 2010 (IPS) – Despite successive awareness campaigns, many Malian women see no need to attend pre-natal check-ups. Health workers say this results in an elevated rate of maternal and infant mortality.

Doctors say 90 percent of potential complications could be predicted and addressed if Mali s women came in for pre-natal checks. …

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…