Amanda Wilson
Davidica Ikai Grasiano Ayahu of the ITWAK Organisation addresses a working group on the specific medical needs of women in South Sudan. Credit: Shereen Hall, courtesy of the Institute for Inclusive Security
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 2011 (IPS) – As South Sudan maps out its economic future at the South Sudan International Engagement Conference (IEC) this week in Washington, women from the new country called on donors to invest in projects that ensure women benefit equally…
PESHAWAR, Feb 13 2012 (IPS) – The world’s two worst polio-affected countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, have exhausted themselves in failed attempts to wipe out the crippling ailment.
A new immunisation campaign against polio has been launched jointly by Pakistan and Afghanistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.
Of the eight new polio cases record in 2012, seven are from Pakistan and one from Afghanistan.
In the…
Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Mar 16 2012 (IPS) – By winning an Oscar at this year s Academy awards, filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has brought home the genius of Pakistan s women as well as the extreme violence they often suffer in a male-dominated society.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Credit: Bina Khan/IPS.
Chinoy s documentary Saving Face deals with the struggles of the victims of disfiguring acid attacks, both to win justice for themselves and to save others from one of the worst forms of violence against women.
Valerie Khan, who heads the Acid Survivor Foundation (ASF), told…
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 26 2012 (IPS) – The 380 families living in Piquiá de Baixo, a small town in the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão, are fed up with having to endure high levels of pollution from nearby steelworks in their water, air and soil.
Clouds of iron dust hang over Piquiá de Baixo. Credit: Courtesy of Piquiá de Baixo Residents Association
The town takes its name from the piquiá tree, a species highly valued for its wood, which has beco…
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…