Anuary Saidi, who suffers from viral diarrhoea, with his mother Mariam. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
DAR ES SALAAM, Dec 13 2012 (IPS) – Half asleep, Anuary lies exhausted on his bed in Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. His mother, Mariam Saidi, sits on the edge of his mattress, staring blankly out of the window. Every now and then, she turns to wipe her 18-month-old son’s forehead.
When she brought Anuary to the hospital the day before, he had a high fever, was suffering from viral diarrhoea, was severely dehydrated and had lost consciousness by the time he was admitted. The doctors saved his life, but he faces a slow discovery.
The impact of the budget cuts would be felt in communities around the world almost immediately. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS
WASHINGTON, Feb 26 2013 (IPS) – Public health workers, activists and policymakers are stepping up a last-minute campaign to highlight the global health impact of historic, sweeping cuts to the U.S. federal budget due to go into effect Friday if Congress doesn’t act.
While some are suggesting that the automatic reductions, known here as the “sequester”, could set back health-related research and outcomes by a generation, others are warning that NGOs and project implementers, long working on the assumption that the cutbacks would be averted,…
GUWAHATI, India, Apr 23 2013 (IPS) – It is as if they have given up hope of ever seeing their girls again. They are an Adivasi family from a remote village in Assam state in India, nestled in the Himalayan foothills. The picturesque surroundings belie the hollowness they feel within.
Three of their four daughters have been missing for the last five years.
“Poor and ignorant, the parents simply don’t know where their girls have gone,” says Sunita Changkakati, executive director of the Assam Centre for Rural Development, an NGO in Guwahati.
The Adivasis, an aboriginal tribal people whose ancestors the British had recruited from central India to work in the tea plantations of Assam, are particularly vulnerable to the menace of human trafficking, though women f…
ROME, Jun 21 2013 (IPS) – The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which works to end malnutrition among more than two billion people worldwide, is expressing strong support for enriching the micronutrient content of plants.
Cassava is a staple crop in Africa. The new variety promoted by CGIAR is more nutritious, contaning higher amounts of vitamin A, zinc, or iron. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
In technical terms, it is called biofortification: a nutrition-specific intervention designed to enhance t…
Ahmad Alhendawi, the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy on youth, speaks with participants in the programme Jóvenes en Red (Youth Net) from Manga, a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Montevideo. Credit: David Puig/UNFPA
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 13 2013 (IPS) – Shortcomings in the educational system in Latin America and the Caribbean fuel inequalities that remain hurdles to access to the labour market and safe sex for a large part of the region’s youth.
Around half of the region’s sexually active youngsters have never used any form of birth control, and an estimated 20 percent of children in the region were born to mothers between the ages of 10…
Protesters outside the offices of agriculture giant Monsanto who were rallying as part of a “national day of solidarity.” Credit: Daniel Lobo/cc by 2.0
SEATTLE, Washington, U.S., Oct 17 2013 (IPS) – The northwestern state of Washington could become the first in the U.S. to require labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on foods and food packages, after a similar measure in California failed last year.
Over 353,000 Washingtonians signed on to a petition creating Initiative 522, which will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot statewide. It notes that such labeling is fast becoming the international norm.”The ‘no’ side has corporations that are all bankrolling their …
Lack of awareness among youth on risks of HIV infections needs to be addressed quickly to stem the disease from spreading, the National HIV Strategic Plan Sri Lanka 2013–2017 has warned. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.
COLOMBO, Feb 2 2014 (IPS) – Four thousand HIV infections in a population of 20 million should not be a difficult figure to manage. But experts in Sri Lanka say social customs and strict laws are hindering them from carrying out prevention and awareness campaigns among high-risk groups.
Despite impressively low national infection rates, there are signs that the spread of HIV which can lead to AIDS has increased among these groups, most of which face os…
This is the first in a three-part series on youth and AIDS in Africa
Afraid of losing playmates, children hide their HIV positive status from their peers. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
BULAWAYO, Apr 3 2014 (IPS) – Three years ago, Robert Ngwenya* and his father got into a heated argument over medication. Ngwenya, then aged 15, refused to continue swallowing the nausea-provoking pills he had been taking since he was 12 years old, and flushed them down the toilet.
During the argument, Ngwenya understood he had been born HIV positive, had been taking antiretrovirals (ARV) and not vitamins and anti-allergenics, and that his father too lived with the virus and the gu…
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Photo Courtesy of UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, May 19 2014 (IPS) – Nearly 20 years ago, the world came together in Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women. There, 189 governments adopted a visionary roadmap for gender equality: the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
More than 17,000 delegates and 30,000 activists pictured a world where women and girls had equal rights, freedom and opportunity in every sphere of life.We must seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to position gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment firmly at the centre of the global agenda.
While much progress has been made i…
Abusers are often family members, making victims reluctant to report the violence. Credit: Boris Bartels/cc by 2.0
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2014 (IPS) – A veteran women s rights activist, Patricia Brownell was still taken aback by the prevalence of abuse against older women she discovered during dozens of conversations she and her colleagues had with victims.
They found that for every one official report of abuse made by agencies in New York State, there are 23 self-reports, with the abusers ranging from husbands, sons, daughters and other relatives to complete strangers.“In many cases, the victims did not want to talk about it. They felt guilty. They felt it was th…