Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Dec 29 2010 (IPS) – As a peer educator at a local HIV/AIDS organisation, Ahmad (not his real name) has taken care to teach his own wife anything and everything he knows about the disease.
Intravenous drug users are the last in line to get support from government-run AIDS programme. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS
But there is something that Ahmad is hesitating to tell her, and it is a fact that is cruci…
Mitch Moxley
BEIJING, Feb 16 2011 (IPS) – Five years ago China pledged to ban smoking in all indoor public places by January of this year. That promise remains unfulfilled and is today symbolic of the lack of progress made in the fight against tobacco use in China, where up to a million people die of smoking-related complications each year.
Smoking is becoming a serious killer in China. Credit: Mitch Moxley
More than half of Chinese men smoke, and a total of 301 million adults currently use tobacco, according to a study by China s Cen…
Kanya D’Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 15 2011 (IPS) – Day five of Japan s post-earthquake, post-tsunami life dawned dismally Tuesday, with soaring radiation levels from the Fukushima Daiichi power plants and a relentlessly rising death toll in the four worst-affected prefectures.
The U.S. Navy is delivering supplies and conducting search and rescue operations in mainland Japan. Credit: U…
WASHINGTON, Apr 13 2011 (IPS) – While the curtain was being raised Tuesday on a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) initiative to pour one billion dollars of federal funding into the Partnerships for Patients Act – a new project designed to save thousands of lives and millions of dollars – the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) held a media briefing here simultaneously presenting studies from their theme issue on Infectious Diseases and Immunology .
A day prior to the release of JAMA s Apr. 13 issue, which addresses an expansive array of diseases and medical and biological immunity, top-dogs from the medical community gathered here to share endeavours at combating the global proliferation of various diseases.
Christian Liendhart, a senior …
Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 13 2011 (IPS) – In spite of the potential risks posed by unwanted or uncontrolled radioactive materials, Mexico lacks comprehensive mechanisms to keep track of these orphan sources, originally used in medicine or industry, and to prevent them going astray.
One example of the problem is a sealed unit of Cobalt-60, a substance dangerous to the environment and to human health, inside a Picker 3000 radiotherapy machine, that is no longer in use and was found in the northern town of Ciudad Juárez, on the U.S. border, IPS learned.
The material was located and removed as part of a programme for recovering lost or obsolete orphan sources, implemented by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA contracted a U.S…
Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Jun 15 2011 (IPS) – The ship breaking companies of Bangladesh continue to import highly toxic foreign vessels despite a two-year-old ban, and are also defying a court order to ensure workers safety and implement environmentally sound practices, a group of lawyers says.
At a shipbreaking yard. Credit: Mahmud/map
The lawyers are blaming state regulators including the Department of Environment and the Ministries of Shipping and Labour for failing to protect coastal ecosystems and to monitor these companies compliance with safety precautions.
We still have evid…
Elizabeth Whitman
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2011 (IPS) – Long heralded as a model for the global response to HIV/AIDS, Brazil is intensifying its actions, at home and abroad, in the face of potential setbacks including an arising need for new treatment regimens, the resultant increase in drug prices and the debate over intellectual property rights.
Not only has the government set human rights at the core of its public health system, committing itself to universal treatment access for persons living with HIV, but it has also challenged aspects of global international property provisions, which in other countries have hindered access to the affordable generic drugs that have been so crucial to Brazil s success.
According to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, the infection r…
Lily Hough
WASHINGTON, Aug 2 2011 (IPS) – While an estimated 12.4 million people linger on the brink of starvation in the Great Horn of Africa, U.S. officials and world relief agencies said Monday that even in a best case scenario the crisis will worsen as the areas in most desperate need remain cut off from access to relief.
A woman holds a malnourished baby at the Badbado camp for Internally Displaced Persons. Credit: UN Photo/Stuart Pric…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 8 2011 (IPS) – A leading international human rights group has accused the United States government, the World Bank and other international donors of indirectly funding forced labour in Vietnam s drug rehabilitation centres.
In a report released Wednesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Vietnam s system of forced labour centres for people who use drugs has expanded over the last decade.
In 2000, there were 56 drug detention centres across Vietnam; by early 2011 that number had risen to 123 centres, the 121-page report said, adding that in that period over 309,000 people passed through the centres.
The Rehab Archipelago: Forced and Other Abuses in Drug Detention Centres in Southern Vietnam said state-run…
Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Oct 21 2011 (IPS) – Today is the best day of my life, Gul Hamid, 40, told IPS. Finally my family members are convinced that HIV/AIDS can t be transmitted through handshakes or shared meals and utensils.
Inauguration of the new centre to support people with HIV and AIDS in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.
Hamid tested positive for HIV/AIDS in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) two years ago and was deported immediately. Since…