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…
Lee Middleton
Volunteers for the Sonke Gender Justice Network door-to-door medical male circumcision campaign. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS
CAPE TOWN, Dec 1 2011 (IPS) – Although at first glance male circumcision may not be the most obvious entrée to get people talking about gender equality, activists in the Western Cape in South Africa are attempting to do just that.
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…
Correspondents* – IPS/Haiti Grassroots Watch
Gérald Saintilimé and Gary Mathieu digging a septic pit at the Tabarre Issa camp. Credit: Fritznelson Fortuné
TABARRE, Haiti, Mar 7 2012 (IPS) – Complete with gallery and garden, the 534 wood and plasterboard houses are arranged in neat rows on a gravel plot of former sugarcane land northwest of the capital.
At first glance, all seems normal in this new community, or as normal as anything has been in a country that suffered a 7.0 earthquake 26 months ago.
In most camps, refugees complain because they are still…
LALMONIRHAT, Bangladesh, Apr 19 2012 (IPS) – The Aditmari Maternity Centre (AMC) is unpretentious but hygienic, and its staff of paramedics welcomes pregnant women from the poor farming villages of this district, 375 km northwest of Dhaka.
Nurse Afroz counsels an expecting mother at the Aditmari centre. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
Asphalt roads lead up to the single storey, located in the centre of Aditmari sub-district, that has a labour room equipped for normal deliveries, a ten-bed post-labour room…