Interview with Makur Kariom, Director of Reproductive Health for South Sudan

JUBA, Jul 11 2008 (IPS) – With few roads and almost no health and education infrastructure for the estimated 10 million people of South Sudan an April census has yet to release any results health care workers have an enormous task ahead of them.

Competing priorities and cultural resistance are slowing down adoption of family planning techn…

Omid Memarian

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 2008 (IPS) – Though human rights and environmental issues such as censorship and pollution in Beijing have been the two major focuses of criticism levelled against the Chinese government during the lead up to the Olympic games, Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is expected to address some of Beijing s environmental successes during the opening ceremonies.

Achim Steiner briefs correspondents at UN …

Louise Redvers

LUANDA, Oct 1 2008 (IPS) – Angola may be emerging as an African super power with its plentiful oil exports and a booming property market. But look behind the façade of this boom and real entrenched poverty continues to blight millions of lives.
In spite of its huge mineral wealth and escalating GDP (24 percent last year) Angola has the second worst child mortality rate in the world, only outdone by Sierra Leone.

According to The State of the World s Children report published in September by the United Nation s Children s Fund, 260 out of every 1,000 Angolan children die before their fifth birthday. The same UNICEF report reveals just 31 percent of Angolan children have access to adequate sanitation, a key factor in the country s high rate of cholera an…

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Nov 24 2008 (IPS) – While pro-choice groups have welcomed the recent decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria Australia s second most-populous state, where around 20,000 abortions are believed to be performed annually anti-abortionists have vowed to continue opposing termination of pregnancies.
I see it as a real victory for common sense, for one, but I also see it as a way in which we ve taken another step towards moving away from the paternalistic framework that was governing termination in Victoria, says Dr. Leslie Cannold, spokesperson for Pro Choice Victoria (PCV), a group of individuals and organisations campaigning for legal access to abortion for all women.

In what was a hotly-contested and controversial decision by the Victo…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 20 2009 (IPS) – Thailand s plans to contain the spread of the deadly avian influenza virus must involve the tens of thousands of Burmese migrant workers employed in this country s poultry industry, say experts.
They form the frontline of Thailand s defence against the spread of bird flu, Jasper Gross, research officer for the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), told IPS. The industry has to protect these migrant workers, give them proper information, equipment and provide a reporting mechanism.

The call for such a programme comes in the wake of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) attempting to drum up attention to help poultry workers and farm…

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 4 2009 (IPS) – Once a serene refuge from urban pollution and chaos, the Argentine countryside has now become a place fraught with risks for many local residents. The massive use of pesticides on fields of soy, the country s top export, is creating a health catastrophe in the rural sector, environmentalists warn.
A report by the Rural Reflection Group (GRR), a local environmental organisation, points to an increase in health problems in the countryside, such as cases of cancer at early ages, birth defects, lupus, kidney problems, respiratory ailments and dermatitis, based on the accounts of rural doctors, experts and the residents of dozens of farming towns.

The GRR has been carrying out a campaign since 2006 to identify towns affected…

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Australia, Apr 3 2009 (IPS) – The revelation that a substantial amount of contaminated water is leaking each day from a tailings dam at a uranium mine, located in a World Heritage Site, has sparked protests from environment activists.
About 100 cubic metres per day of contaminated water is coming from the tailings dam, according to official information given at a recent Senate committee hearing by Alan Hughes, the supervising scientist for the Alligator Rivers region in Australia s Northern Territory, where the Ranger mine is located.

Tailings are the crushed rock that is left over from the mining process. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), these tailings contain some 80 percent of the radioactivity of the origi…

Emilio Godoy

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico, May 6 2009 (IPS) – Mexican communications specialist Marla Vargas had her baby in the bathtub at home, attended by a midwife, because, she says, I wanted a different experience, and a better way for my child to come into the world.

Midwifery students in class Credit: Courtesy of CASA

The practice of midwifery in Mexico goes back to the pre-Hispanic cultures of the people living in this land before the arrival of the conquistadors in the early 16th century. In many rural communities, midwives are the only …

Other factors driving world hunger are an increase in natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and drought; armed conflict (since 1992, the proportion of short and long-term food crises attributable to human causes has more than doubled, from 15 percent to more than 35 percent); extreme poverty and inadequate agricultural infrastructure, such as roads, warehouses and irrigation; and the threats to farmland posed by erosion, salination and desertification.

According to the WFP, hunger and malnutrition remain the world s number one health risk, greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
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UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 2009 (IPS) – Poor sanitation and hygiene costs the Lao People s Democratic Republic 193 million dollars per year, an estimated 5.6 percent of gross domestic product, according to figures from the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) of the World Bank.

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