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…
Sujoy Dhar
Children with congenital disorders linked to the Bhopal gas leak at a candle-light vigil. Credit: Chingari Trust/IPS
BHOPAL, India, Dec 2 2011 (IPS) – India s sport stars have joined the survivors of the 1984 gas leak tragedy in this city, capital of the central Madhya Pradesh state, to protest against a sponsorship deal between Dow Chemical and the organisers of the 2012 London Olympic Games.
BOBOYE, Niger, Feb 4 2012 (IPS) – Women have been left in charge of many of the households in the village of Zamkoye-Koïra, in western Niger, as food shortages have driven male family members to leave in search of work elsewhere. A national survey of vulnerable households shows that 5.4 million people face food insecurity across Niger.
A young child suffering from malnutrition at a nutri…
Neena Bhandari
U.S. proposals for intellectual property rights in the TPPA could spell disaster for HIV/AIDS positive people who rely on the generic drug market Credit: Mudit Mathur/IPS
SYDNEY, Mar 9 2012 (IPS) – The 11th round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) talks concluded in Melbourne Friday, with member states suggesting the negotiations had made significant progress but civil society groups reiterating concerns that the United States corporate demands could undermine social, economic and en…
PESHAWAR, Apr 21 2012 (IPS) – We have been spending sleepless nights without electricity and clean water. This place is not worth living in but we have no option and will remain here as long as the military operation continues in our area, said Gul Rahim, a former resident of Bara tehsil in Khyber Agency, currently languishing in the Jallozai refugee camp in the Nowshera district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Like other children at Pakistan s Jallozai refugee camp, t…
TAIPEI, May 24 2012 (IPS) – Earlier this week a coalition of rights organisations issued a ‘shadow report’ on Taiwan’s compliance with two international human rights covenants, which it incorporated into domestic law in 2009, probing the country’s track record on human rights.
Liao Fu-teh, associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Law, who edited the , said, The government itself thinks it is in fine health, but from the standpoint of civil society we find that its body may have high blood pressure and even some worrisome tumours.
The ‘Taiwan Human Rights Report 2011: Shadow Reports on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) from NGOs’…
WASHINGTON, Jul 10 2012 (IPS) – Thirty-one years after the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, the country’s infection rates have not gone down in a decade, warned advocates speaking here on Tuesday ahead of a major international conference.
“When people think of AIDS today, most probably don’t realise that AIDS is still really in a crisis mode in (the United States),” Carl Schmid, the deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, based in Washington, told journalists on Tuesday.
“The fact is, this country has more people living with HIV/AIDS than ever before – nearly 1.2 million people. Nearly 20 percent of those, some 200,000, don’t even know they are infected.”
Each year, the U.S. experiences 50,000 new cases of infection.