Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Oct 3 2007 (IPS) – At a pay-and-use toilet at Karachi s Civil Hospital, Rustom Ali asserts: I m an employee here so why should I pay? Hari Ram, the 60-year-old caretaker, is too meek to argue and lets Ali in. Very few people pay, Ram mutters.
The four-unit squat latrine, two each for men and women, was constructed in 2003 near the hospital s outpatient department by the Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), an organisation originally formed in this southern port city to help tackle crime. It has since taken on the task of providing Karachi #39s citizenry with public toilets that work.

A little over a hundred people use this public toilet on a given day, according to Ram. Because the toilets in the wards are filthy the users include patients …

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 30 2007 (IPS) – A young woman lost her job in a small town in Serbia after she gave birth to a baby boy and was to be absent from work for a year. That sacking shook up a nation.
The case stirred strong public emotions, prompted fierce reactions among women #39s groups, and led to outrage even among some government ministers.

The young mother was head of the municipality of Knic, 140 km south of Belgrade. She was voted out of the job by councillors who said work has to go on, and she would be absent for a year.

The outrage was particularly strong because it is official policy to stimulate births, as the nation is among the ten eldest in the world, together with Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, San Marino (an…

Adrianne Appel

BOSTON, Nov 29 2007 (IPS) – The United States has slashed the AIDS death rate among white and wealthy U.S. citizens, but the disease continues to ravage the black community at full force, leaders say.

HIV/AIDS protesters march in New York in 2006. Credit: Kaitlyn Tikkun

African Americans are 13 percent of the U.S. population but are 50 percent of those diagnosed with HIV each year and 50 percent of those who die of AIDS annually, according to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC).

We are in a publi…

Sam Olukoya

LAGOS, Jan 10 2008 (IPS) – The Federal Government policy to stop gas flaring commences on Jan. 1, 2008, and any company which flares gas after that time would be shut down. This was the strong warning from the Nigerian government in October last year to multinational oil companies operating in the country.
Gas flaring continued in 2008 in defiance of the Nigerian government s warning that the act would not be tolerated in the new year.

Responding to pressure from oil companies, the Nigerian government pushed the deadline back on Jan. 6. A press statement issued by Levi Ajuonuma, group general manager of public affairs for the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), announced a shift of deadline from December 2007 to December 2008.

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Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 18 2008 (IPS) – The agriculture industry in Argentina is enjoying the boom in demand for soybeans and other commodities and the subsequent high prices, which are also fattening the state coffers. But the question of the unsafe handling of pesticides and fertilisers has basically been ignored amidst the collective euphoria.
According to the Secretariat of Agriculture, the latest harvest set a new record of nearly 95 million tons of grains, half of which were soybeans.

This year, the harvest should exceed 100 million tons, and the state expects to take in 7.5 billion dollars in tax revenue as a result.

Last year, farmers purchased more than 5,000 tractors, a similar number of sowing machines and 2,000 harvesting machines. But as…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 20 2008 (IPS) – New technology, religion and the market must be harnessed to secure basic toilet facilities for Asia s rural and urban poor, sanitation experts from the region said here Thursday.
Currently, over 2.6 billion people across the world have no access to an organised system of toilets, of which some 1.5 billion people live in the Asia-Pacific region, states Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a regional U.N. body based in Bangkok, which hosted a conference on sanitation.

And every year, over 200 million tonnes of human waste go uncollected and untreated globally, adds ECSAP. This not only fouls the environment and spreads diseases, but forces the people with no access to toilets to live in deepe…

Kathryn Strachan

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 29 2008 (IPS) – Each psychiatric patient leaving Tower Hospital in the Eastern Cape Province under a new project to integrate patients into the community is sent home with two piglets. While at the hospital, patients are trained to raise pigs, the hope being that they will use the piglets for breeding to develop a sustainable source of income once discharged.
But in following up with these patients at their homes in the surrounding hills and villages there is not a single pig to be found. They have all been eaten or stolen, says Tshedi Tshabalala, who runs the local community rehabilitation centre. And sometimes there is no food for the pigs.

The fate of the piglets highlights the challenges in transforming South Africa s mental hea…

Kathryn Strachan

JOHANNESBURG, Jun 6 2008 (IPS) – There is barely a path leading down the steep incline and through the dense bush to the Mabuyakhulu homestead. It would be easy to pass by without finding 13 year old Zanele* and her eight year old sister Andiswa who stay there on their own.
Their father died long ago and their mother is in hospital dying of AIDS. The two girls have been left completely alone to fend for themselves.

Their mother, Hlengiwe, is at the nearby Mosvold Hospital in Ingwavuma, situated in the far northern corner of KwaZulu Natal on the border of Swaziland, and she does not know what will happen to her children when she is gone.

Zanele has been fetching water and cleaning the house while Andiswa builds a playhouse out of stones. Earlie…

Ramesh Jaura

TOYAKO, Japan, Jul 8 2008 (IPS) – Three key documents on African development, food security, and corruption emerging Tuesday from the summit of major industrial nations leaders seem to have taken non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by surprise in delivering more than expected, even if they did not please all.
In a document titled Development and Africa the G8 countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States) firmly committed (themselves) to working to fulfil their pledges on official development assistance (ODA) made at Gleneagles (three years ago), and reaffirmed at Heiligendamm, including increasing, compared to 2004, with other donors, ODA to Africa by 25 billion dollars a year by 2010.

And they went a step fur…

Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Aug 5 2008 (IPS) – Developing countries are in need of large sums of money to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, but international aid will not entirely cover their needs.
An example of the financial demand is the application by Latin American and Caribbean countries for 600 million dollars, submitted to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria during its round eight call for proposals, which ended Jul. 1. This is three times the amount requested in 2007, the Global Fund said in a press release.

This is a historic amount, when compared with recent applications, Michel Kazatchkine, the executive director of the Global Fund, told IPS at the 17th International AIDS Conference which opened Sunday in the Mexican capital.

Between…