George Njogopa

DAR ES SALAAM, Apr 23 2007 (IPS) – While the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a bright idea , the hidden agenda of western countries makes it impossible for African states like Tanzania to achieve the goals, expounds actor Rashid Mkwinda.
He is one of the people whose thoughts IPS canvassed in the streets of Dar es Salaam in a series of random interviews about the MDGs. For him, Southern Africa s ability to achieve the MDGs is firmly connected to the superpowers international policy approach to developing states.

Indeed, Mkwinda wonders if the MDGs are not like other global programmes which have as their aim the exertion of power over poor countries and the exploitation of Africa s resources.

It is clear that America and i…

Pilirani Semu-Banda

BLANTYRE, May 31 2007 (IPS) – Malawi s utilisation of energy resources is heavily dominated by firewood, which provides 93 percent of all energy needs. Current annual household consumption of firewood and charcoal are at 7.5 million tons, exceeding sustainable supply by 3.7 million tons.
Poverty and population growth in the country are placing escalating pressures on Malawi s indigenous forests which, the ministry of environment says, translates into an annual destruction of approximately 50,000 to 70,000 hectares of forest.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is hopeful that a new ethanol-based innovation will go some way to addressing Malawi s energy problem. The UNDP has included a local company s development of an ethanol-based stov…

Barin Masoud

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2007 (IPS) – While some encouraging advancements have been made to contain a global drug epidemic, opium production in Afghanistan s southern provinces continues to climb, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported Tuesday.

Poppy eradication in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. Credit: UN Photo/ Freshta Dunya

There is some grounds for optimism that the runaway train of drug addiction is being slowed down, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director …

Tonderai Kwidini*

HARARE, Jul 31 2007 (IPS) – Taps in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, are running dry even though the city s main supply dams are more than 60 percent full, according to figures from the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA). With more than half of Harare #39s three million inhabitants now experiencing water shortages, residents are resorting to desperate measures to find supplies.

Sewage gushing out in front of the Mashapa home. Credit: Wilson Maduna

Carrying a large bucket to work has become a daily…

Nitin Jugran Bahuguna

NEW DELHI, Aug 29 2007 (IPS) – Though adolescents are said to be at the centre of the AIDS epidemic and India has the largest number of infections in Asia, this conservative country continues to shy away from incorporating sex education in school curricula.
As many as 11 of India s 29 state governments have either banned or are in the process of dropping sex education from school programmes. Education and health are state domains in India s federal system.

Such a state of affairs recently prompted India s outspoken federal minister for women and child development, Renuka Chaudhary, to remark that India seemed to her like a nation of hypocrites .

Among major states that have banned sex education in state-run schools are western Maharashtra…

Zofeen Ebrahim

LAHORE, Oct 1 2007 (IPS) – The only time I’ve been to Rawalpindi was in 2004 when I was taken by an ‘agent’ (middleman in the human organ trade) to a hospital there to sell my kidney, says Faqir Masih, 23. He never wants to visit the city, again.
Coming from Youhanabad, a poor Christian settlement on the fringes of Lahore, capital of Punjab province, Faqir, a labourer, makes Rs 250 (four US dollars) for a day’s toil -– when he can find work. I was enticed into selling a kidney by the thought of marriage, he said. The agent promised me Rs 100,000 (1,666 dollars) for the kidney, which was transplanted to an Arab.

But Faqir was duped. The agent fled, literally throwing him out on the road with not even enough money to board a bus back to Lahore.…

Jie Cao*

TIELING, Oct 19 2007 (IPS) – When I was young, if we had visitors, we d go to the river to catch fish with a net. We could catch many big fish of different kinds, recalled septuagenarian Xie, who lives in this village in the north-eastern Chinese province of Liaoning. At that time, there were big willows on the riverbank, so the villagers could relax under the trees in summer.
The river he was reminiscing about was the Tiaozi River, a tributary of the Liao River that feeds 30 million people. But today, the river is more a canal, given the stench of rotten fish and the disgusting color of excrement. There are no fish in the water, no plants along the banks.

Chemical pollutants coming from upstream, added Xie, have adversely affected the river over the last de…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 25 2007 (IPS) – Public health and HIV/AIDS activists from the developing world are seeking to break the monopoly over drugs held by pharmaceutical giants through a new global campaign designed to influence international debate over the issue.
Formulated at the end of a three-day meeting, last week, which brought some 200 participants from 20 countries to the Thai capital, the campaign seeks a new way out of the current patent system; one that will encourage innovation of new drugs and access for all, says Kannikar Kijtiwatchakul, an organiser of the International Conference on Compulsory Licensing: Innovation and Access for All. What we have now is innovation controlled by the pharmaceutical industry that lets them have a monopoly on drugs. <…

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Jan 7 2008 (IPS) – China s booming medical biotechnology industry is producing controversial drugs and gene therapy treatment programmes for domestic use, as well as to treat critically ill foreigners seeking potential cures unavailable elsewhere.
China s Beike Biotechnologies harvests stem cells from the umbilical cord or amniotic membrane and injects them into patient s spinal region. More than 1,000 patients, including 60 foreigners, have been treated for a variety of conditions including Alzheimer s disease, autism, brain trauma, cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

We met foreigners there who were happy with Beike s treatments, said Peter Singer of the Mc…

Sharon Davis

ABUJA, Feb 8 2008 (IPS) – HIV/AIDS policies and programmes disregard the sexual needs of people living with the virus, claim a number of HIV-positive women who attended the third Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights held this week in Nigeria.
The initiatives focus on prevention and treatment, they add, ignoring the fact that people living with HIV/AIDS who are conducting normal lives still want to experience sexual pleasure, and have children.

The epidemic has evolved. HIV-infected people are not dying; we are living and we are having sex, noted Beatrice Were, an activist in Uganda for the Global AIDS Alliance, a non-profit based in Washington.

She said health care providers and others are shocked when they discover that a person living …