Nastasya Tay

PRETORIA, Dec 3 2009 (IPS) – Newborn babies in South Africa will now be treated for HIV, regardless of their CD4 count. President Jacob Zuma announced several new measures which focus on expanding the country s anti-retroviral (ARV) programme, especially in terms of mother-to-child-transmission, and for those with both TB and HIV.

A supporter at the World Aids Day celebration held in Pretoria. Credit: Nastasya Tay

The new policies target three primary groups babies, pregnant women, and those…

Ansel Herz

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 15 2010 (IPS) – The roof of Haiti s national penitentiary is missing. The four walls of the prison rise up and break off, leaving only the empty sky overhead.

A view of the Haitian National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince following the powerful Jan. 12 earthquake. Credit: UN Photo/Logan Abassi

The gate to the jail in downtown Port-Au-Prince is wide open; the pri…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 19 2010 (IPS) – The world s longest toilet queue, scheduled for next month, may not be a celebrity-filled event worthy of a Hollywood spectacle but it could still find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Come World Water Day, hundreds and thousands of people are expected to line up outside public latrines and toilets, as part of a global campaign to highlight the plight of some 2.5 billion people who still lack adequate sanitation worldwide.

The event, due to take place Mar. 22, is a joint effort by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) and two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) the Freshwater Action Network and End Water Poverty.

The aim is to get the world to unite around a single mass ca…

Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi

KAMPALA, Mar 25 2010 (IPS) – They endure stigma, discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but Ugandan women living with disabilities say the greatest challenge facing them centres on their reproductive health.
In addition to the impacts of physical, mental, intellectual and sensor impairments, we are double discriminated (against), first as women, and then as disabled, said Beatrice Guzu, executive secretary of the National Organisation of Women with Disabilities in Uganda.

According to Guzu, while women s empowerment and gender equality strategies emphasise the importance of addressing discrimination against women, such strategies do not target women with disabilities.

Law offers little protection

Uganda has a disability p…

Mel Frykberg

BEIT UMMAR, West Bank, Apr 27 2010 (IPS) – Residents of this Palestinian village refuse to buy the idea that the flood of raw sewage from the adjacent Israeli settlement of Kfar Etzion, that destroyed vineyards and contaminated their drinking water, was an accident.

Vineyard in Beit Ummar village, flooded with sewage from nearby Israeli settlement. Credit: Palestine Solidarity Project.

The Israeli Civil Administrati…

Hannah Rubenstein

NEW YORK, Jun 5 2010 (IPS) – In a vast field, a sinewy, dark-skinned man bends at the waist, slicing stalks of wheat with a small machete. In a village, a mother gently places her infant son, slung in a piece of blue fabric, onto a vegetable scale housed in a makeshift clinic.

Bangladesh, 2009 Credit: Ron Haviv/VII

On the ground, three pairs of nimble hands sort through a pile of turnips in silence. Two girls walk to school. A baby cries. A mother laughs.

These images are intercut with startling statistics: 48 percent of Bengali children under five are malnourish…

Matthew O. Berger

WASHINGTON, Jul 8 2010 (IPS) – In 1984, then-U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler famously declared, We hope to have such a vaccine ready for testing in approximately two years. The vaccine in question would prevent AIDS and the goal Heckler set has been missed by over 26 years.
During that time, around 25 million people have died from the disease and the search for a vaccine continues.

But two studies released Thursday in the journal Science give some hope to those that have worked so long on this cause. In them, researchers disclose the discovery of two antibodies which identify and fight off viruses in the blood stream that can stop 90 percent of known HIV strains from infecting human cells in the laboratory.

While …

Rosebell Kagumire

KAMPALA, Jul 29 2010 (IPS) – Uganda s National Drug Authority (NDA) says the failure rate among samples of medicines tested at their laboratories has fallen by 15 percent from the early 2000s. This serves as a possible indication of a drop in the availability of counterfeit medicines in the East African country.
According to the NDA registrar, Apollo Muhairwe, the work of the drug authority at border points has ensured that fewer counterfeit medicines make it into the Ugandan market.

We have put measures in place during the last 10 years that have worked. Now we have embarked upon raising awareness among Ugandans to only buy their drugs from accredited outlets, Muhairwe told IPS.

Counterfeit medicines can be both branded and generic medicine…

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Aug 26 2010 (IPS) – With cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico barely underway, energy companies are already assuming a crouching stance in anticipation of a no-holds-barred attack by environmentalists on what the industry says is the next major breakthrough in natural resource extraction.
The breakthrough is called fracking short for hydraulic fracturing the process of injecting water and chemicals into reservoirs to fracture rock and free up gas and oil.

Critics say fracking can poison water supplies. They also say it uses large amounts of fresh water and generates large amounts of wastewater with limited disposal options. Hydraulic fracturing injects high volumes of water, chemicals and particles underground to create fractures through which gas ca…

Nastasya Tay

MAPUTO, Sep 20 2010 (IPS) – Civil society groups are challenging a six-month authorisation granted aluminium giant BHP Billiton to emit potentially dangerous fumes from its Mozal smelter into the air without treating them first.

The company says it needs six months to upgrade fume treatment centres, during which time emissions will b…