Arkan Hamed and Dahr Jamail

BAGHDAD, Sep 25 2008 (IPS) – Not even the elevators work now at Baghdad Medical City, built once as the centre for some of the best medical care.
One of the ten elevators still does, and the priority for this is patients who have lost their legs and there are many of them. The rest, the doctors, patients and students at the four specialised teaching hospitals within the building complex, just take the stairs, sometimes to the 18th floor.

This is in a city that had been given dreams of great development five years back, around the time of the U.S.-led invasion. And much of the corporate-led media in the U.S. and Europe still insists that the situation in Baghdad has improved .

The improvement that such media sees, no one in Iraq does…

Danstan Kaunda

LUSAKA, Nov 15 2008 (IPS) – In an attempt to drastically reduce child mortality rates and boost maternal health, the Zambian government last year allocated a substantial budget to the public health sector. This move has resulted in a notable drop in child deaths, researchers say.
However, most progress has taken place in Zambia s cities, while in rural areas health service provision has improved little.

In its 2007/2008 national budget, the Zambian health department received the largest share 11.5 percent of the total national budget. The money has been used to scale up services in public health care sector, with focus on boosting paediatric care.

In Zambia, the main causes for high infant and child mortality are diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria…

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 10 2009 (IPS) – The latest UNAIDS Report estimated that 33 million people around the globe are living with HIV; 22 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Around 2.7 million new HIV infections occurred worldwide in 2007. However, encouraging new data suggests there have been significant gains in preventing new infections in several African countries with high prevalence rates.
According to the report, changes in sexual behaviour in Rwanda and Zimbabwe have led to a decline in the number of new HIV infections, while young people in countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia are waiting longer to have sexual intercourse.

There is a new emphasis amongst AIDS campaigners on knowing your epidemic , that is to say analysing the local…

Kristin Palitza

ROME, Feb 24 2009 (IPS) – Almost five million children under the age of five die of malnutrition every year in the developing world. Food aid which mainly contains nutrient-poor carbohydrates does little to address the absence of a diverse diet that would prevent the condition.

Food aid: meeting nutritional needs in the South, or disposing of subsidised grain from the North? Credit:…

Servaas van den Bosch

WINDHOEK, Apr 1 2009 (IPS) – Tax relief for lower income groups in Namibia should not conceal that the 2009/10 budget falls short in addressing structural problems in the economy, civil society organisations have charged.

A nurse in Katutura TB hospital in Windhoek…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 2009 (IPS) – Asia has long been touted as the world s largest and most populous continent with over 4.1 billion people, accounting for more than 60 percent of the global population.
But according to the recently-released Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific, fertility rates in the region have fallen below replacement level in 16 countries, including China (the world s most populous nation) Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Still, a number of countries have fertility rates above 3.0 children per woman, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India (the world s second most populous nation) Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tajikistan and Timor-Leste.

Since 2000, the region s annual population growth has fallen to 1…

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 1 2009 (IPS) – Handed down from generation to generation, traditional knowledge about medicinal plants has reached state laboratories in Brazil through a programme that has already identified 71 native and exotic species for producing herbal medicines.
The National Programme of Medicinal Plants and Phytotherapeutics was created around the time when the World Health Organisation (WHO), in 1978, recognised the use of medicinal plants for prophylactic, curative, palliative and diagnostic purposes, and recommended that public health policies include them.

According to the Health Ministry, Brazil is the country with the greatest plant genetic diversity in the world, with close to 55,000 classified species out of an estimated total of …

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 26 2009 (IPS) – Doctors at the forefront of the battle against the H1N1 influenza virus in Argentina point out that the number of cases is far larger than the official figures reflect. But they also stress that the mortality rate, as a proportion of the much higher number of cases, is lower than people assume.
The Health Ministry is still issuing a daily report on the number of cases of what is popularly known as swine flu, and the number of deaths. The latest statistics are 1,488 confirmed cases and 23 deaths, representing a mortality rate of 1.3 percent.

The media seize on these numbers with alarm, comparing them with the statistics from other countries.

As of 20:32 on Jun. 24 there are already 21 cases of H1N1 flu, said th…

Natalia Ruiz Díaz

ASUNCIÓN, Aug 4 2009 (IPS) – Nicolás, a 14-year-old disabled boy, was finally able to open up and begin expressing himself thanks to Open Wings, a project in Paraguay that uses modern dance as a tool to help youngsters with disabilities develop on both the physical and psychological level.
He was a very introverted boy, withdrawn, who expressed practically no emotions, Estela Maris Rolón, Nicolás s mother, told IPS. But now thanks to dance he is more open, more expressive, and has incorporated that in his life.

The Open Wings (Alas Abiertas) project emerged in 2007 from workshops carried out with institutions that work with people with disabilities.

The kids came, and we started to work, said Mercedes Pacheco, head of Open Wings. And …

Mercedes Sayagues

SAO TOME, Aug 24 2009 (IPS) – If you live in São Tomé, a good investment in your health is to plant a po-sabom tree (Dracaena aroborea) in your backyard. Leave space: it can grow up to 20 metres high, with sword-shaped leaves.

Sum Gino at his market stall: We don

The local stiljon, or traditional healer, has many uses for po-sabom. For toothache, drink tea of its bark and roots. For skin itches…