Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Dec 27 2010 (IPS) – Thanks to a healthy cocktail of foreign aid and a pragmatic condom policy, one of South-east Asia s poorest countries is well on course to meeting an international target aimed at reversing the spread of HIV and AIDS.
But even as Cambodia s basks in praises for its achievement completing one of the eight U.N. backed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 it is facing a steady trickle of troubling questions about a possible reversal of the kingdom s success.
Cambodia s continued dependence on foreign donor assistance is not the best prescription for sustaining the country s remarkable history in driving down HIV infections , warns a new report, co-authored by Cambodian public health experts, released in December.
Charles Davis
WASHINGTON, Feb 15 2011 (IPS) – When Kern Valley State Prison opened in 2005, the 379 million dollar facility in Central California was hailed as state of the art . But within weeks of opening, a major problem was discovered: its water was poisoned containing roughly twice the federally permitted level of arsenic, a known carcinogen.
And nothing has been done about it.
They really don t care, says Bertha Nava, the mother of an inmate who has for more than five years been forced to drink the contaminated water at Kern Valley State Prison. He s complained that the water not only tastes bad, but looks it too like part urine, part water .
In the nearly six years since the issue was uncovered, the more than 5,000 incarcerated men at Kern Valley State…
Manipadma Jena
VRINDAVAN, India, Mar 15 2011 (IPS) – Surrounded by lush green wheat and yellow flowering mustard fields at Ekdanta primary school, it is noon and the 57 children in two combined classes are fidgety impatient for the school served midday meal.
Turning out 36,000 flat breads in an hour, this machine highlights technical innovations that help to…
Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 13 2011 (IPS) – April has traditionally been the time for hanami , or cherry blossom festivals, when millions of Japanese hold parties under the pink flowering trees in parks and streets lit up gaily by lanterns.
A girl writes a message to Tohoku victims on a message board at the Okinawa International Film Festival. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS
But, one month after the …
Keya Acharya
BANGALORE, May 12 2011 (IPS) – Moves to enact a new law on animal welfare in India have upset public health advocates, who fear it will interfere with efforts to control rabies-carrying stray dogs.
Stray Dogs in Cochin, Kerala, India Credit: SingChan/Creative Commons Licence
The draft animal welfare act, formulated by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), seeks to expand AWBI branches across the country, define cruelty to animals more stringently and impose higher fines for violations.
What…
Milfred Perkins
WASHINGTON, Jun 13 2011 (IPS) – Between 2011 and 2012, 6.4 million children could die of preventable diseases, a number greater than the total population of Denmark or Norway.
According to a June 2011 by Save the Children, a child in the poorest fifth percent of the world s population is three times less likely than a child in the richest fifth to be immunised, and twice as likely to die before the age of five.
And while vaccination rates are at their highest point in history with an average of four out of five children receiving the DPT3 immunisation against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus one-fifth or 24 million of the world s children are not receiving even the most basic life-saving vaccines.
According to , a study commissioned by the J…
Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 24 2011 (IPS) – Twenty-eight-year-old Yushi Sato washes cars for a living, but they are no ordinary cars. Every day, Sato hoses down vehicles contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant that was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami that hit north-east Japan Mar 11.
Sato, who has worked at the Fukushima plant for the past five years, used to be a welder, but after the disaster struck he was assigned the job of washing the plant s various vehicles. We wash on average around 200 vehicles that show higher than normal radiation levels, he told IPS.
Wearing heavy protective gear and checked daily for radiation exposure, Sato says he worries about the effects of radiation on his health but is determined to keep working.
WASHINGTON, Jul 28 2011 (IPS) – When news of the disastrous BP oil well explosion reached the residents of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana last April, Mayor Tim Kerner did the only thing he could think of to stop the oil from destroying his community. He encouraged everyone in his town to join him on the water, working day and night throughout the disaster to clean-up the spill.
Now, one year after BP managed to cap the runaway well that fouled the Gulf of Mexico with an estimated five million barrels of oil, most of those people are ill.
I m afraid my neighbors will come to me and say, I wouldn t have listened to you and kept my job if I knew it would kill me, Kerner said.
Kerner s story was one of many shared by Kerry Kennedy, president of the , at a briefing Wednesday e…
Abdurrahman Warsameh
MOGADISHU, Sep 6 2011 (IPS) – Armed groups are withholding aid and preventing Somali famine refugees from leaving camps to ensure the continued supply of food by aid agencies that they are presently selling on the open market.
Armed gunmen running camps for famine victims steal their food and prevent them from leaving to search for aid elsewhere.…
Jared Ferrie
KURMUK, Sudan, Oct 20 2011 (IPS) – Hawa Jundi sat on the ground outside a makeshift shelter where she and her family now live. A violent storm was moving in and lightning streaked toward the earth as the wind began blowing hard against the tarpaulin tied to a frame of sticks.
SPLM-N soldiers clean weapons they say they took from government forces. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS
Jundi is one of tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who are scattered…