Aprille Muscara

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 1 2010 (IPS) – Aid groups and U.N. agencies are raising the alarm over the vulnerability of pregnant women and babies in flood ravaged Pakistan.
Over the past month the unprecedented monsoon-induced floods have affected nearly 18 million people 1,600 lives have already been lost, according to U.N. estimates.

We know that mothers are giving birth in flimsy or crowded shelters, steps away from stagnant water and debris, said Sonia Kush, director of emergency preparedness and response at Save the Children. And we know the dangers for newborns are extreme the first hours and days of a child s life in the developing world are the riskiest, even without the added complications posed by a disaster of this scope. Displacement, increased im…

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2010 (IPS) – As a three-day anti-poverty talkfest drew to a close Wednesday, the United Nations shifted its focus from the poor and the hungry to two of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society: women and children.

Michelle Bachelet, head of U.N. Women, speaks to the press. Credit: Sriyantha Walpola/IPS

The mission: a massive drive to save the lives of more than 16 million women and children dying of deadly diseases every year, primarily due to the lack of…

Matthew O. Berger

WASHINGTON, Oct 15 2010 (IPS) – With a record number of people undernourished last year and that number only down about 10 percent this year this year s World Food Day, to take place Saturday, carries with it a new sense of urgency. But in the conferences and events being held to commemorate the day, there will also likely be a sense of hope and opportunity.
That hope is coming from the discovery of both new ways to feed a crowded, hungry planet and new efforts to spread and implement those practices.

Danielle Nierenberg has spent the past year travelling the globe as co-director of the Worldwatch Institute s Nourishing the Planet project, whose mission has been to assess and raise awareness of the state of agricultural innovations everything from cr…

NEW YORK, Nov 17 2010 (IPS) – Privacy advocates called on the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Tuesday to end its controversial new initiative of whole-body scans and enhanced pat-downs of airline passengers, calling the programme dangerous to health, ineffective and unconstitutional .
Led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, a group of organisations held a telephone news conference to insist that the strip-search programme be suspended and turned over the Congress to investigate.

The machines are ineffective, the pat-downs are too invasive, and the use of radioactive technology poses health risks, Nader said, citing testimony from a number of physicians who agreed that radioactivity could cause skin problems and might pose a public health threat to passenger…

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…