Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 27 2007 (IPS) – With an eye to the future of rice farming in Thailand, a local grassroots organisation is bringing together youth in a north-eastern rice-growing province in a celebration of the diverse varieties of this staple grown in the traditional way.
The event in Kalasin, from Mar. 28 to Apr. 4, aims to expose the young to the local rice-growing culture, says Janphen Ruyan, programme manager of the Foundation of Reclaiming Rural Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Action. Rice is our life; it is not something we just consume.
This youth camp aims to make the sons and daughters of the country s farmers proud of what their communities have produced in the past and the need to do more, she explained in an interview. There is concern…
Moyiga Nduru
PRETORIA, Apr 26 2007 (IPS) – In Africa, 25 countries are expected to experience water scarcity or water stress in the next 20 to 30 years. This translates into 16 percent or 230 million of Africa s population facing water scarcity by 2025, and 32 percent or 460 million people living in water-stressed countries by that time.
This is according to a paper presented by Ahmed Nejjar of the World Health Organisation s (WHO) regional office for Africa at a conference looking at water management. The two-day conference, entitled Water Management Africa 2007, was attended by representatives from multilateral, nongovernmental and governmental agencies. It ended in the South African capital Pretoria on April 24.
Signs of climate change can be seen in decreasing rai…
Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jun 5 2007 (IPS) – Pakistan s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) extends 27,220 sq km along the Afghanistan border and has been the target of a series of debilitating U.S. missile attacks since 2005.
Believed to be hiding amongst its 3.5 million Pashtuns are several top al-Qaeda, flushed out of Afghanistan along with the country s former Taliban rulers, by the U.S., and its allies.
Aerial attacks have crippled FATA s once well-organised health delivery network. Government-run hospitals are exposed to U.S. air attacks from across the border in Afghanistan, and the retaliatory fire by Taliban and pro-Taliban groups.
The seriously ill are taken by road to overcrowded hospitals in the neighbouring North West Frontier Province (NWFP…
Raúl Gutiérrez
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 3 2007 (IPS) – While health authorities in El Salvador have launched a campaign under the slogan Take the test: positive or negative, we are all human beings in the face of AIDS , people living with HIV complain of a lack of medicines and of discrimination, even at the hands of public health doctors.
The Salvadoran Public Health Ministry and Social Security Institute report that they tested at least 40,000 people for AIDS in the country s public hospitals and health centres, and in parks and shopping centres, on Jun. 27, which was declared National Day for HIV testing.
But experts who spoke to IPS said the government campaign, which got underway in late June, is merely aimed at improving the country s international image and drawing …
Abid Aslam
WASHINGTON, Aug 6 2007 (IPS) – China and the United States have agreed on measures to improve the safety of Chinese exports of food and drugs following a wave of scandals involving tainted products.
The move could defuse tensions between the world s biggest consumer and exporter. Beijing has cited its own safety concerns in blocking imports of U.S. food but officials and commentators here have seen the action as retaliation for U.S. rejection of Chinese goods.
Chinese authorities and visiting U.S. officials agreed on an initial framework to strengthen product safety standards and their enforcement, the state-run Xinhua news agency said Saturday. Details of the agreement, reached with a delegation of senior officials of the U.S. Department of Health and Huma…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 3 2007 (IPS) – The search for answers to the spread of the deadly bird flu virus is calling into question a long-held practice in science where recognition is given to positive test results, say experts meeting in the Thai capital.
It stems from lack of clear evidence to link wild birds to the cases of avian influenza (AI) that have infected poultry populations across countries and continents, they add. Yet this view has not taken flight because of a bias in science against negative test results .
Science by its nature is about discovery, about finding something positive and concrete. But there is a problem with science when studies offer a negative result that reveals so much, says William Karesh, head of the Global Avian Influenza …
Anne-Kathrin Keller
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 3 2007 (IPS) – The scene within and outside the United Nations last week was strikingly dissimilar: while more than 140 world leaders were arriving in New York to wine, dine and address the General Assembly, a group of activists was demonstrating outside the U.N. compound for a hunger-free world.
The message conveyed by the activists was clear: the United Nations is fighting a losing battle to fulfill its pledge to halve the number of undernourished people.
According to the U.N. s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the number of hungry people worldwide has increased from 800 million in 2000 to 854 million this year. About 35,000 people die of hunger every day.
World leaders shouldn t just put the issue of hunger on the …
Yolandi Groenewald*
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 26 2007 (IPS) – Waterless or composting toilets are being touted as a promising solution to many of South Africa #39s sanitation woes.
Currently, just under 14 million of the country #39s approximately 48 million citizens lack access to sanitation, and about 200,000 households are reliant on the bucket system. As more demands are placed on national water resources, it appears increasingly unlikely that homes without sanitation will be able to receive the popular flush toilet hence the search for solutions elsewhere.
It is only in the past couple of years that the government listed dry sanitation solutions as an acceptable form of sanitation (and) that various government departments have started to entertain the use of waterless t…
Brad Miller* – IPS/IFEJ
DAVAO CITY, Mindanao, Nov 29 2007 (IPS) – The villagers in the mountains surrounding Davao city are bracing for the day the crop-dusting planes resume dropping fungicide on the banana plantations and the wind blowing toxic fog over their houses, water supply and children.
Children going to school as aerial sprayer flies overhead Credit: IDIS
They fly over early morning, 5 am, says one local farmer, describing the noise and irritating fumes trailing behind the planes as they skim over at tree-top height.
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Constanza Vieira and Diana Cariboni
QUIBDÓ, Colombia, Jan 9 2008 (IPS) – During the high season of popular festivals in Colombia s Chocó region, pregnant girls as young as 13 start flowing in, says a nursing assistant in the obstetrics department at the hospital of the provincial capital, Quibdó.
Transporting building materials by panga . Credit: Jesús Abad Colorado
The fiesta of San Pancho as Saint Francis of Assisi, the city s patron saint, is known is a two-week festival that begins on Sept. 20, with traditional music, abu…