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…

Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, warns that negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement are a matter of life and death.

GENEVA, Mar 9 2014 (IPS) – If you or some family members or friends suffer from cancer, hepatitis, AIDS, asthma or other serious ailments, it’s worth your while to follow the negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and other similar bilateral trade agreements.

It’s really a matter of life and death. For the TPPA can cut off the potential supply of cheaper generic medicines that can save lives, especially when the original branded products are priced so sky-high that very few can afford them.

Recently, a cancer specialist in New Zealand (one of the TPPA counties) warned that the TPPA would prolon…

People displaced by militancy and the military operation wait to get registered in Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 2 2014 (IPS) – Every night in his sleep, Rizwan Ahmed sees his sons being killed. “When he wakes up, he starts crying. He realises they are dead and it was the nightmare he has been having,” says Dr. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the psychiatrist treating him.

Ahmed, 51, used to be a school employee in Bara Khyber Agency in Pakistan’s militancy-hit Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) before tragedy struck almost a year ago. “He lost his two sons in the violence back home. His grief moun…

From Jun. 30 to Jul. 1, 800 health experts, officials and activists will gather in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the third Partners’ Forum around the Action Plan for Women’s and Children’s Health

According to an African proverb, “every woman who gives birth has one foot on her grave.” It is time to make this proverb a historical fact and not a present reality. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

NAIROBI, Jun 27 2014 (IPS) – An African proverb says that every woman who gives birth has one foot on her grave.

Sadly, this is still true today, especially within the context of the AIDS epidemic.

In spite of the huge advances in the prevention of mother…

The PNG Government has recently introduced legislation to outlaw polygamy and increase the country’s rate of official marriage and birth registrations. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

SYDNEY, Jul 28 2014 (IPS) – New legislation recently passed in the southwest Pacific Island state of Papua New Guinea (PNG) outlawing polygamy has been welcomed by experts in the country as an initial step forward in the battle against high rates of domestic violence, gender inequality and the spread of AIDS.

“If polygamy remained acceptable, wives would never speak for their rights and they and their children would continue to be silent victims of violence,” Dora Kegemo …

WASHINGTON, Sep 16 2014 (IPS) – A multilateral arbitration panel here began final hearings Monday in a contentious and long-running dispute between an international mining company and the government of El Salvador.

An Australian mining company, OceanaGold, is suing the Salvadoran government for refusing to grant it a gold-mining permit that has been pending for much of the past decade. El Salvador, meanwhile, cites national laws and policies aimed at safeguarding human and environmental health, and says the project would threaten the country’s water supply.“This mining process would use some really poisonous substances – cyanide, arsenic – that would destroy the environment. Ultimately, the people suffer the consequences.” — Father Eric Lopez

The country als…

Gender inequalities explain why prevention is failing to contain HIV infection among young women in East and Southern Africa. UNAIDS calls for a major effort to reduce their risk of infection. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

NAIROBI, Nov 7 2014 (IPS) – Experts are raising alarm that years of HIV interventions throughout Africa have failed to stop infection among young women 15 to 24 years old.

“Prevention is failing for young women,” says Lillian Mworeko, HIV expert with , based in Uganda.

Among women in East and Southern Africa, four out of ten new HIV infections among women aged 15 years and over happen among  those aged 15 to 24, according to the J…

A boy grazes his cattle on farmland close to the site of a landslide in northern Pakistan’s Bagrot valley. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS

BINDO GOL, Pakistan, Jan 15 2015 (IPS) – Khaliq-ul-Zaman, a farmer from the remote Bindo Gol valley in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has long lived under the shadow of disaster.

With plenty of fertile land and fresh water, this scenic mountain valley would be an ideal dwelling place – if not for the constant threat of the surrounding glacial lakes bursting their ridges and gushing down the hillside, leaving a trail of destruction behind.

“We can safely say that over 16,000 have been displ…

Corinne Schuster-Wallace, Senior Research Fellow at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and Robert Sandford is EPCOR Water Security Chair at UN University, are lead authors of the new report, “Water in the World We Want, Catalyzing National Water-Related Sustainable Development.”

Little girls in Timor-Leste cross a rice field after heavy rains carrying water in plastic containers. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

HAMILTON, Canada, Feb 25 2015 (IPS) – We have entered a watershed year, a moment critical for humanity.

As we reflect on the successes and failures of the Millennium Development Goals, we look toward the post-2015 …

Distributing condoms in prisons and schools has set off a heated debate, rendering the fight against HIV/AIDS a challenge ahead of this year’s U.N. deadline for nations to halt its spread. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS

HARARE, Mar 28 2015 (IPS) – Tatenda Chivata, a 16-year old from Zimbabwe’s Mutoko rural district, was suspended from school for an entire three-month academic term after he was found with a used condom stashed in his schoolbag.

Regerai Chigodora, a 34-year-old prisoner at a jail in Harare, had his 36-year sentence stretched to 45 years after he was caught with used condoms in prison early this year.

With restrictions blocking the distribution o…