Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jun 16 2006 (IPS) – Next to pirated films and music on CDs, the hottest selling Indian items in Pakistani markets these days are pharmaceutical drugs smuggled in from the neighbouring country.
Owing to a long history of rivalry and warfare, trade between the South Asian neighbours is minimal. But the ever-increasing costs of drugs, manufactured locally by multi-national corporations (MNCs) or imported, is encouraging chemists to turn to India s massive generic drugs industry.
Chemists, especially in rural areas, are doing a roaring business selling all sorts of preparations smuggled in from India. Antibiotics, analgesics, sedatives, tranquilisers and other medicines such as hormones, drugs for hypertension, ulcers and contraception are making…
Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Sep 20 2010 (IPS) – An aggressive public health and information programme is giving Sri Lanka a key weapon in its battle against the deadly dengue fever, bringing it under control after hitting epidemic proportions in the last two years.
Pupils hold up dengue awareness posters in school. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS
Between 2009 and mid-September 2010, dengue fever infected over 65,000 people in Sri Lanka and caused 563 deaths. The largest caseload was reported in 2009, which had 346 deaths an…
BHUBANESHWAR, India, Jan 27 2012 (IPS) – The primitive Juang tribe in remote Nola village on Chandragiri hill experienced its first three institutional childbirths only a month ago.
Male Health Activists at a strategy session. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
Credit for the safe deliveries goes to Malay Ranjan Juanga, a ‘male health activist’ (MHA) entrusted with mother and child health in his community of 94 households in Nola.
Set eight km away from the main road, Nola and is best reached by trekking up the treacher…
Two health care workers clean their feet in a bucket of water containing bleach after they leave an Ebola isolation facility during an Ebola simulation at Biankouman Hospital in Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS
KANDOPLEU/ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 26 2014 (IPS) – The nurse carefully packs the body into a plastic bag and then leaves the isolation tent, rinsing his feet in a bucket of water that contains bleach. Then he carefully takes off his safety glasses, gloves and mask and burns them in a jerry can.
Behind a cordon, hundreds of people are watching, including Ivorian Health Minister Raymonde Goudou Coffie and several local media.
A teenage mother and her toddler in Bonpland, a rural municipality in the northern province of Misiones in Argentina. Latin America has the second highest regional rate of early pregnancies in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 8 2016 (IPS) – In plain and simple language, an Argentine video aimed at teenagers explains how to get sexual pleasure while bein…
Yohei Sasakawa, chair of The Nippon Foundation and World Health Organisation (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, delivered a keynote address at the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC). Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
MANILA, Sep 11 2019 (IPS) – Forty years ago, Yohei Sasakawa saw his father moved to tears after meeting and witnessing the suffering of people affected by leprosy – also known as Hansen’s disease. Not only did the patients have a physical illness, but they also suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. It made the young Sasakawa vow to work for the elimination of leprosy from the world – just as his father had been doing.
Decade…
Credit: Twitter @Dr_Aqsa_Shaikh
NEW DELHI, India, May 7 2021 (IPS) – When Dr Aqsa Sheikh Tweeted and asked if she was the only transgender person to head a vaccination centre, it seemed extraordinary that in a country with 1.3 billion people, that this could be true.
“Can I lay claim to be the only #Transgender person to head a #Covid #Vaccination Centre in India? Will be very happy to have company of other Trans Folks in this spot,” she wrote on March 3, 2021.
India had turned countless hospitals into COVID-19 vaccination centres – and Sheikh was, and still is, the only transwoman heading one.
Born and raised in Mumbai, Dr Aqsa Sheikh is a p…