Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jun 6 2008 (IPS) – A global human rights lobby slammed Burma s military regime for driving survivors who have endured untold hardship since last month s powerful cyclone into further misery.
Villagers making a shelter for a house in the Poeshangyi village in the Day Da Ye township. Credit: Moe Yu May/IPS
The junta in Burma, or Myanmar, has forced cyclone victims out of temporary shelters, confiscated aid, and…
Aaron Glantz*
SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 4 2008 (IPS) – You could hear the joy in Patrick Campbell s voice as he reflected on U.S. President George W. Bush s signing Monday of a new GI Bill of Rights for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
It s hard to actually picture that it s done, the legislative director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America told IPS. There are veterans all across this country and in Iraq and Afghanistan who are dreaming bigger dreams now. When we were in Iraq we were always talking about what we were going to do when we got home and I know that now they re over there thinking I can go to any college I want to now. I can go to the best school I can get into not just the school that I can afford .
The new law, which is modeled on th…
Daniela Estrada
MEXICO CITY, Aug 4 2008 (IPS) – It is necessary to evaluate the current global architecture for responding to the AIDS epidemic, move forward with studies on HIV rates, and implement effective prevention strategies, said the experts meeting at the 17th International AIDS Conference, which opened Sunday in Mexico.
The extraordinary mobilisation of economic and human resources against the HIV/AIDS pandemic has borne fruit, but efforts must be stepped up to continue fighting the disease, Mexican expert Jaime Sepúlveda said Monday, one of the plenary speakers at the first session, on the State of the Epidemic .
According to the 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), an estimated 33 million peopl…
Yugendree Naidoo
CAPE TOWN, Sep 23 2008 (IPS) – In the impoverished informal settlement of Du Noon, 20 kilometres north of Cape Town, sick residents rely on a single clinic staffed by six nurses to meet their health needs.
Fifty-eight year old Oliver Lala waited 11 hours to get medication for his asthma. Credit: Brenda Nkuna/WCN
During one week in August, the nursing component of the clinic was reduced by 50 percent due to staff illness and trai…
Mirela Xanthaki
NEW YORK, Nov 14 2008 (IPS) – We each spend, on average, three years of our lives going to the toilet assuming we have one, that is.
Although bodily functions is a topic usually treated as off-limits, the fact that 2.6 billion people are without adequate sanitation facilities is something to be loudly talked about, development activists say.
Just as HIV/AIDS cannot be discussed without talking frankly about sex, so the problem of sanitation cannot be discussed without talking frankly about s**t, one Nepali sanitation activist says.
In her new book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters , the journalist Rose George embarks on a journey across the world to try to break taboos and erase the shame that accomp…
Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Jan 9 2009 (IPS) – Every five minutes she gives a hacking cough. Ndlaleni Ndzinisa (70) says she has continuously suffered from tuberculosis for the past five years. Because she cannot afford to pay for transport to the nearest hospital, she has repeatedly failed to adhere to her tuberculosis (TB) treatment.
Ndzinisa s doctor, Franklin Ackom, says it is highly unusual that she has not been diagnosed with the difficult-to-treat, multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extremely-drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), which are strains that are resistant to treatment by first-line and second-line drugs, including Isoniazid and Rifampicin.
It s against my will, said Ndzinisa, who lives in the small village of Lulakeni, in southern Swaziland. I cannot afford th…
Thalif Deen interviews SONG YOUNG-GON, head of the World Toilet Association
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24 2009 (IPS) – As part of the International Year of Sanitation (IYS), the United Nations launched an aggressive campaign last year to fend off what it called a silent global crisis : the woeful lack of adequate sanitation in the world s poorest countries.
Song Young-Gon Credit:
But the U.N. s best efforts were still not good enough judging by the fact that over 40 percent of the global population 2.6 billion out of nearly 6.0 billion people still live without proper toilet facilities.
The problems continue to linger …
Nergui Manalsuren interviews JAE SO and PETER KOLSKY of the World Bank
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 31 2009 (IPS) – The world s developing nations, particularly in Asia and Africa, are struggling to cope with two of the basic necessities of life: fresh water and adequate sanitation.
Jae So Credit: Simone McCourtie/World Bank
The United Nations says there are still some 1.1 billion people who lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion without basic sanitation.
The World Bank allocates 60 percent of its 10.7-billion-dollar budget for water supply and sanitation for water, and only…
Servaas van den Bosch
WINDHOEK, Apr 30 2009 (IPS) – Within the next twelve months, eight Southern African countries will synchronise their battles against malaria through cross-border collaboration. They hope to eliminate malaria in four of them by 2015.
The Elimination Eight (E8) initiative will establish an early warning mechanism and a rapid response system in the eight Southern African countries. In addition the countries health ministers promise to invest in malaria research and make financial resources available for the project.
A budget for the E8 initiative has not yet been set, but the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) believes it will cost a whopping $200 million a year to control the disease in sub-Saharan Africa.
International cooperati…
HO CHI MINH CITY, May 29 2009 (IPS) – While investors and their opponents argue the pros and cons of an ambitious plan to mine bauxite deposits in Vietnam s Central Highlands region, life for the tea and coffee farmers in nearby towns has already become a lot more complicated.
Hills that used to be plantations of tea have already been bulldozed into a 50-hectare site to locate the bauxite project, the state-controlled ‘Tuoi Tre newspaper reported in April from Lam Dong province in central Vietnam, the location of one of the planned mines.
The same thing has happened to the coffee hills in Dak Nong province, but on a larger scale the construction site may stretch to 200 hectares, ‘Tuoi Tre said of the second proposed mine site.
The government s plan to mine baux…