Cléo Fatoorehchi interviews DR. MARIE-PAULE KIENY, WHO Assistant Director-General
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 22 2010 (IPS) – This past September, world leaders meeting at the United Nations vowed to spend $40 billion over the next five years to save the lives of more than 16 million women and children dying of deadly diseases or lack of medical care, particularly during and after pregnancy.
Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny Credit:
Known as the Global Strategy for Women s and Children s Health, it involves commitments from 35 governments, 15 charitable institutions, seven U.N. agencies, 13 private corporations and mo…
Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 9 2011 (IPS) – Millions of cancer patients around the world benefit from a medication called Paclitaxel (Taxol), which may begin to be produced from a new source: fungi found at the summit of Venezuela s flat-topped mountains. But the indigenous communities who have lived in that area since time immemorial will receive no benefits, and were not even consulted on the matter.
In another case, researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, after signing an agreement with the Venezuelan government in 1998, began to do field work early this decade among Yanomami communities in the extreme southern part of this South American country.
They studied and collected medicinal plants used by the Yanomami, an Amazon jungle people…
Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 14 2011 (IPS) – Desperate efforts by the government to avoid the looming nightmare of a nuclear meltdown in tsunami damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants, 240 kilometres north of Tokyo, have brought no relief to the public who face the possibility of another explosion that could spew deadly radiation across the country.
After two explosions in three days at Fukushima reactors No. 1 and No. 3, a third reactor No. 2 has now lost its ability to cool.
The nation was informed of a deadly development Monday that fuel rods of the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima plant may have partially melted after emergency cooling systems failed, raising the spectre of toxic radioactive contamination, given the fact the plant is operated on mixed oxide (MOX)…
Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 6 2011 (IPS) – Scientists in Brazil have created the first map of clusters of antibiotic resistance in Brazil, linking the phenomenon to abuse of the drug and opening doors to guide public policies for antibiotic prescription and sales.
Superbug carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumonia (CRKP) Credit: Public domain
The map of probability of risk of resistance to the ciprofloxacin antibiotic in Escherichia coli was produced by the EUREQA (the acronym for epidemiology of use…
Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 11 2011 (IPS) – Health experts from around the world have acknowledged rising numbers of lifestyle or non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in different countries, admitted inadequate funds are the biggest obstacle in health delivery, and called on the global community to consolidate efforts to effectively tackle the problem.
The health, socioeconomic and developmental costs are immense. More than nine million people die prematurely in their productive years before the age of 60. Healthcare costs are spiralling, says Ala Alwan, assistant director-general of World Health Organizations (WHO s) Non-communicable Disease and Mental Health Cluster. The time to act has come.
Jessica Brinton, a representative from the Center for Global Developmen…
Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Jun 13 2011 (IPS) – The deadly epidemic of escherichia coli (EHEC) in Germany, that broke out in mid May, and which has killed 29 people so far, is the latest in a series of food and hygiene emergencies that have shaken European households for more than a decade.
This series of emergencies range from epidemics such as the so called mad cow disease (BSE) and its human variant, Creuztfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), which affected mostly Britain and France killing some 210 people, to the more frequent contamination of eggs with dioxin, or the recurrent presence of salmonella in dairy products.
Putrid meat has been discovered in sausages, high amounts of antibiotics in shrimp and fish, and there have been revelations of a lack of general hygiene in industria…
Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Jun 22 2011 (IPS) – People in Western Kenya are now able to buy effective anti-malarial drugs at low prices thanks to the success of the Global Fund s subsidy programme, and thanks to honest pharmacists who are reselling the drugs at the recommended low prices.
The drugs subsidised through the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
The program by the Global Fund to subsidise the cost of the most effective anti-malaria…
Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 27 2011 (IPS) – María José Aceituno, who works at a public relations firm in the Guatemalan capital, has two children and says she is not having any more, in order to safeguard the financial position and security of her family. I would rather have two happy children than 10 who are dissatisfied, she said.
The countries of Central America have slammed on the demographic brakes by promoting sex education and access to family planning methods, in order to improve living conditions, which are marked by poverty and social inequality.
Other factors, like the high cost of living and soaring rates of violence and crime, especially in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have also acted as a disincentive to increasing family size. Aceitu…
Inaki Borda
NEW YORK, Aug 30 2011 (IPS) – I just gave birth on the ground I had no drugs for pain during delivery, one Haitian mother tells Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a report released Tuesday that says a year and a half after the country s devastating earthquake, women and girls are still facing gaps in access to available healthcare services necessary to stop preventable maternal and infant deaths.
Haitian women and girls living in makeshif…
WASHINGTON, Oct 14 2011 (IPS) – When Jaydee Hanson, then-bioethics director for the United Methodist Church, spoke out publicly against gene patents over 15 years ago, some in the biotech industry compared his stance to the Catholic Church s persecution of Galileo, the 15th century astronomer who discovered the moons of Jupiter.
Hanson and 200 other religious leaders had released a statement that DNA in the human body and animals are natural objects and should not be subject to patenting.
Patent supporters in the biotech industry disagree, arguing that isolated copies of genes outside the human body should be patentable and that the prospect of intellectual property rights on genes serves as incentive for further research.
On Wednesday, the (ACLU) announced it woul…