Muddassir Rizvi

ISLAMABAD, May 14 2006 (IPS) – Islamabad is not the same too much traffic, too much smoke, too much noise. Our little heaven has become just another big city stripped of the tranquility it was once known for, a dejected Samina Shah said, as she waited at a traffic light on Blue Area Road, in Pakistan s capital.
An asthma patient, she wears a mask while driving her children to school in crawling traffic. Traffic jams are my worst nightmare. I just can t breathe, she lamented.

Pakistan s political capital is bursting with vehicles, the traffic police announced recently following a survey. As many as 143,886 vehicles enter Islamabad every day, said senior superintendent of Islamabad Traffic Police Sultan Azam Temuri.

A leafy city of over one milli…

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…

Fritzroy Sterling

NEW YORK, Jul 31 2006 (IPS) – When Stanley Tookie Williams was strapped to a gurney awaiting his execution last December, things did not go as planned. California executioners had trouble finding a suitable vein in which to inject a lethal combination of drugs.
What happened next, medical professionals say, was probably a botched job that ultimately resulted in excessive and unnecessary pain for an additional 12 minutes.

Williams probable inhumane death, which would be in violation of the U.S. constitution, was not the only one, according to doctors groups and rights organisations that have studied executions.

Death row inmates this year have challenged the humaneness of the lethal series of drugs meant to kill them. Courts in California and …

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Sep 4 2006 (IPS) – The Chilean government decreed that all public health centres must provide birth control, including emergency contraception, to adolescents and women over the age of 14 a measure that immediately drew the ire of the Catholic Church and the right-wing opposition parties.
We applaud the decision of the Chilean Health Ministry, because we believe it safeguards the rights of women and gives us a chance to interrupt the cycle of poverty, Ximena Rojas, assistant director of the non-governmental Centre for the Development of Women (DOMOS), remarked to IPS.

After President Michelle Bachelet, a pediatrician, took office in March, Domos asked the Health Ministry to expand the distribution of emergency contraception.

The meas…

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Stephen Leahy* – IPS/IFEJ

BROOKLIN, Canada, Sep 25 2006 (IPS) – A green chemical revolution is underway that promises to be environmentally sustainable and profitable while reducing the risks of industrial disasters like the Bhopal, India gas leak in 1984.
Green chemistry has already turned maize into biodegradable plastics, developed non-toxic solvents and dramatically reduced the toxic byproducts from the manufacture of popular pharmaceuticals like ibuprofen. It is vital to the production of Toyota s new electric cars, made in part from kenaf, an annual grass plant.

Green chemistry is about developing new products and processes which actually fit the triple bottom line of environmental, economic and social sustainability, said Robin Rogers, a researcher and direct…

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 2 2006 (IPS) – Mbya Guaraní children living in the subtropical rainforests of Argentina s northeastern province of Misiones are dying from preventable illnesses, and extra provision by the government of money, medicine and food seems unable to halt the catastrophe.
In the last two months, 21 Mbya children have died from respiratory problems or malnutrition, and another 13 are in the hospital. These are large numbers in proportion to the size of the ethnic group 4,083 people according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), or just over 3,000 according to private counts.

Indigenous people and environmentalists say that the root cause of this crisis is deforestation, which is making inroads into Mbya Guaraní territ…

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Nov 30 2006 (IPS) – Which citizens is a government most accountable to? Those who voted it into power? Or is it more the people who re too young to cast ballots too short, even, to reach the table in a voting booth: the children?
If it s the latter, then how has Kenya s government conducted itself towards the nation s children in the matter of HIV/AIDS? Those who pause to take stock of this, Friday, in commemoration of World AIDS Day (for which the theme this year is Accountability ) will find themselves confronted with a situation which often seems to contain more problems than solutions.

The country and the world at large have shown commitment to fighting the disease, but children have received a raw deal, said Michael Angaga, national co-ordi…

Pratap Chatterjee*

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 2007 (IPS) – The convoy of flatbed trucks picked up its cargo at Baghdad International Airport last spring and sped northwest, stacked high with crates of expensive medical equipment. From bilirubin metres and hematology analysers to infant incubators and dental appliances, the equipment had been ordered to help Iraq shore up a disintegrating health care system.
But instead of being delivered to 150 brand-new Primary Health Care centres (PHCs) as originally planned, the Eagle Global Logistics vehicles were directed to drop them off at a storage warehouse in Abu Ghraib.

Not only did some of the equipment arrive damaged at the warehouse, owned by PWC of Kuwait, one in 14 crates was missing, according to the delivery documents. The s…