Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Apr 28 2011 (IPS) – The questions came like something from a medical student s exam: What is routine immunisation? When should a vaccine be destroyed? What is the best temperature for storing a vaccine? At which angle should the needle be held while administering a pentavalent vaccine? And which five diseases does a pentavalent vaccine prevent?
All these and hundreds more were thrown at a group of vaccinators at a three-day training held by the government-run Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI). It was part of a nationwide exercise to improve the skills of the country s army of vaccinators full-time employees of the Health Ministry whose job is to make sure Pakistan s 15 million children below five years old are inoculated against disease.
Elizabeth Whitman
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2011 (IPS) – Officials underscored the importance of stepped-up action Friday to combat HIV/AIDS, the worst epidemic the world has seen since it began 30 years ago, ahead of a high-level meeting on the disease at the United Nations next week.
Although greater numbers of people have gained access to treatment and rates of new infections have dropped, declining by 25 percent globally from 2001 to 2009, We still have a long way to go, said Asha-Rose Migiro, deputy U.N. secretary-general, in a press briefing to launch the report .
At the end of 2010, for instance, about 6.6 million people in low and middle-income countries were receiving antiretroviral therapy. Yet 9.0 million eligible people in those same countries were not receiv…
Abdurrahman Warsameh
MOGADISHU, Jul 20 2011 (IPS) – Tens of thousands of starving Somalis have made their way to the government- held part of Mogadishu in search of food, but many parents have made the anguished decision to leave a child too weak to make the journey behind in hope of saving the others.
One of the millions of children in Somalia in need of food aid. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS
As many from the south abandon their homes and make their way to the city s c…
Arsène Séverin
BRAZZAVILLE, Aug 24 2011 (IPS) – Marguerite Kassa feared she would find herself alone in the small crowd of a dozen other pregnant women at the integrated health centre in Mossendjo, in the southwestern Republic of Congo. I am six months pregnant already, but I hesitated to come here before now, because there is so much contempt for us, the thirty-year-old indigenous woman tells IPS. Yet I was warmly welcomed.
While around 80 percent of Congolese women give birth in health facilities, fewer than one in four indigenous women give birth at health centres.
Widespread discrimination
In 2007, indigenous people in Congo numbered 43,500, just under two percent of the country s population of 3.7 million. To promote and protect their rights, a law was…
PESHAWAR, Jan 20 2012 (IPS) – In their efforts to kill and injure more people as part of a terror campaign in northern Pakistan, the Taliban militia have resorted to lacing bombs with toxic chemicals that leave survivors with complicated wounds.
Taliban bombs are now laced with chemicals. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.
The new techniques devised by the militants are designed to inflict complicated injuries on the survivors of the bombings and suicide attacks. They develop contractures and physical deformities, said Muhamma…
Sujoy Dhar
A pregnant mother and her daughter in the rural Purulia district of West Bengal state in India struggle against the country s son preference Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS
NEW DELHI, Mar 1 2012 (IPS) – At the intensive care unit of the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital in New Delhi, a two-year-old battered baby girl is fighting to survive.
The doctors attending to her have waged a six-week battle to keep her alive, but they are quickly losing hope that she will ever live a no…
TRIPOLI, Apr 7 2012 (IPS) – At a crowded corner of the Tripoli Medical Centre, people gather every morning to submit paperwork for medical treatment abroad, or worriedly scan new lists of approved names plastering the walls.
Kaltoum Alhadi bound for Italy for corrective surgery stands before a list of approved patients. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS.
Kaltoum Alhadi Marwan, 29, is one of the lucky ones. She won a visa and the g…
Women’s rights and reproductive health are critical factors in sustainable development. Credit:Ignatius Banda/IPS
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 2012 (IPS) – What does birth control have to do with reducing global emissions?
Everything, women around the world would say, because they know how closely linked reproductive health is to issues ranging from poverty and food security to climate change and beyond. This message was precisely what female leaders brought to the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development, but not many were listening, least of all the Vatican.
The only way to respond to increasing human numbers and dwindling resources is through the emp…
KARACHI, Pakistan, Aug 3 2012 (IPS) – “This is just a trailer of the horror that awaits us,” says noted demographer Farid Midhet, referring to Pakistan’s bulging population and the possibly corresponding link to rising crime, including murders, robberies, rioting and extremist activity.
According to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 1,257 people, including 64 children, have been murdered in different parts of Karachi alone, since the beginning of the year.
Karachi, Pakistan’s financial capital and the world’s fifth largest city, has an estimated population of 20 million, which is increasing at the rate of six percent per year…
After four years, tens of thousands of children in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are receiving the polio vaccination. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sep 26 2012 (IPS) – Over thirty thousand children in the remote Tirah area of the Khyber Agency, part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Northern Pakistan, have waited four years for protection from polio, a viral disease that is sometimes referred to as ‘infantile paralysis’ due to its crippling effects on children.
A massive government and civil society effort through the month of September finally began to reverse the trend that had kept the children of Ti…