Family planning in the LDCs is crucial to lowering birth rates, reducing poverty and protecting vulnerable populations against climate change. Credit: SERP/IPS
PARIS, May 30 2012 (IPS) – The reproductive rights agenda, from improving women’s access to education to systematic family planning to reducing birth rates and combating poverty, has become a cornerstone of most industrialised nations’ development policies toward the least developed countries (LDCs), comprised primarily of sub-Saharan African states.
This sharpening of focus comes just in time for the Rio+ 20 summit on sustainable development, slated to run from Jun. 20-22 in Brazil, where the…
MAE SOT, Thailand, Jul 17 2012 (IPS) – From a wooden, weather-beaten building on the edge of this border town, Mahn Mahn charts dangerous missions deep Myanmar (also Burma) for the 2,000-odd health workers under his wing.
These tours, through the mine-infested stretches of eastern Myanmar, include supplying basic maternity kits for pregnant women from the country’s ethnic minorities.
Beneficiaries of these humanitarian forays by the Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT), the non-profit group that Mahn Mahn is secretary of, include the Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan communities.
In staying its course, this group, which began its mission over a decade ago, implies that little has changed on the ground despite ceasefire agreements signed over the past 10 months betwe…
MBUJI MAYI, DR Congo, Sep 5 2012 (IPS) – Despite the desperate lack of access to water for domestic use in Mwene Ditu, in the central Democratic Republic of Congo, Dieudonné Ilunga spent a good part of July blocking up residents wells.
They ve dug them in old cemeteries, in newly-demarcated lots, next to toilets, said Ilunga, head of the Water Resources Research Department in the city, the second largest in DRC s Kasaï-Orientale province.
Just ten percent of Mwene Ditu s 600,000 residents are connected to the water supply network – and even for these lucky few, water flows through the taps only on Monday and Friday.
Vianney Muadi, a mother of two in the city s Musadi neighbourhood, said she stores as much water as possible when it runs. Sometimes, we go whol…
A particularly high incidence of hepatitis has been reported among Tibetan exiles. Credit: Katie Lin/IPS.
DHARAMSALA, India, Oct 19 2012 (IPS) – As the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) works to address some of its more immediate political problems, long-term public health issues have emerged, including high rates of hepatitis B among the exiled community.
But this year, the health department of the CTA, which is based in Dharamsala in northern India, took steps to recognise World Hepatitis Day for the first time on Jul. 28, showing their commitment to reduce these rates.
“We instructed all our health centres to observe this day and to spread awareness ab…
SANTIAGO, Nov 22 2012 (IPS) – In Chile, not only do all people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS receive treatment, but the country also has advanced mechanisms for monitoring outcomes of the antiretroviral therapy.
“Treatment is available in many other parts of the world, but no one knows whether or not it is working,” Marcelo Wolff, an infectologist who studies HIV/AIDS at the University of Chile, told IPS.
In this South American country, “coverage extends to nearly everyone living with HIV,” added Wolff, who won a Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award this year, which recognises innovative research that has made a notable contribution to improved clinical care in the field of internal medicine.
The Bulawayo Island Hospice has been operating since 1982 and is one of the few medical facilities catering to Zimbabwe’s poor. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
BULAWAYO, Jan 11 2013 (IPS) – It took Gily Ncube’s daughters two weeks to sell enough chickens to raise the 18 dollars needed to buy the morphine tablets their mother takes every four hours.
In a country where unemployment is estimated at 70 percent, 18 dollars for a bottle of 60 tablets of 10 milligrammes (mg) each is a steep price to pay, equivalent to about 18 loaves of bread.
But the small, rural family had no choice morphine is the onl…
Critics say the EPA should not have approved clothianidin, a potent pesticide that belongs to a family of substances linked to the current widespread die-off of global honeybee populations. Credit: Bob Peterson/cc by 2.0
WASHINGTON, Mar 28 2013 (IPS) – An environment group here is warning that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a key government regulator, may have been haphazardly approving thousands of pesticides for decades, some of which pose risks to both human and environmental health.
Following on two years of research, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a watchdog group, has found that as much as 65 percent of the 16,000 pesticides the EP…
A mother and her child from West Point, a low-income neighbourhood of Monrovia, Liberia. The 10-worst countries to be a mother in are all in sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS
NAIROBI , May 19 2013 (IPS) – Victoria J. married in 2009 at age 14, and became pregnant shortly after. “I started labour in the morning on a Friday …. The nurse kept checking and saying I would deliver safely. On Monday she said I was weak.
“The doctor decided to operate on me. (During the) operation they found the baby was dead. The doctor said the baby had died due to the long labour. After that, I found out that urine was coming out all the time,” she said.
Women and…
Over 10 million residents of Small Island Developing States depend on the Pacific Ocean for survival. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
SYDNEY, Jun 8 2013 (IPS) – The immense scale of the Pacific Ocean, at 165 million square kilometres, inspires awe and fascination, but for those who inhabit the 22 Pacific island countries and territories, it is the very source of life. Without it, livelihoods and economies would collapse, hunger and ill-health would become endemic and human survival would be threatened.
But as populations rapidly escalate, the sustainable future of this vast ecosystem hangs in the balance, while the pressing need for e…
Latin American demographers and government delegates analyse the region’s population and development challenges in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 17 2013 (IPS) – Nearly 20 years after the landmark U.N. conference on population and development, the countries of Latin America have an opportunity to make headway with a new agenda on these issues, thanks to the favourable economic context that has made it possible to reduce social inequalities.
The situation in the region was debated at the preparatory meeting in Rio de Janeiro for the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the C…