Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 10 2008 (IPS) – The northeast of Brazil, known for its droughts and poverty, has been drenched by torrential rains since early March. Floods have left over 400,000 people homeless and 33 dead, but the abnormal conditions are not due to global warming, according to meteorologists.
Rare rainy seasons like this one have been observed since the 19th century, whenever the cyclical La Niña climate phenomenon occurs, bringing cooler surface waters to the Pacific ocean and warmer temperatures to the Atlantic, said Lincoln Alves, a meteorologist at the Centre for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC).
This combination of ocean conditions favours the formation of a low pressure belt on land in the equatorial region, known as the Intert…
Aileen Kwa
GENEVA, May 21 2008 (IPS) – As the 61st annual World Health Assembly gathers in Geneva this week, a major issue that the world s governments are struggling with is patents on medicines, and whether the option to digress from a strict patent system should be endorsed by the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO).
The United States is the sole country obstructing the ability of the WHO to push for a more flexible intellectual property system, according to several sources. This issue is being negotiated at the WHO s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG).
According to the WHO s website, developing countries remain largely excluded from the benefits of modern science. IGWG s mandate is to prepare a …
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 18 2008 (IPS) – AIDS and global health activists are calling on the U.S. Senate leadership to urgently approve a record five-year, 50-billion-dollar bill to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis primarily in Africa so that President George W. Bush can take it with him when he meets with other western leaders at next month s Group of Eight (G8) summit in Japan.
The activists believe that Congressional approval of the package will give Bush greater leverage in persuading his counterparts from Europe and Japan to commit substantially more of their own money to the same cause.
The bill, an extension of Bush s own five-year, 15-billion-dollar President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), enjoys strong bipartisan support. But it is opposed in…
Mohamed Fofanah
FREETOWN, Aug 27 2008 (IPS) – A barefoot girl watches expressionless as men clad in expensive suits and women in designer clothes make their way on foot to the Community Centre in Kroo Bay, Freetown. They are here to launch the first ever State of Human Rights Report for Sierra Leone; Zainab, 12, is in the midst of another day on the narrow, muddy streets of the area, selling groundnuts to help support her family.
Home for her is the warren of patchwork wood and tin dwellings that sits at the bottom of the west end of the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown. The paths in Kroo Bay are of hardened dirt that turns to mud during the rainy season. There are no sewage pipes or water mains beneath them and they are too narrow for a car to travel.
Children bare t…
Brahima Ouédraogo
OUAGADOUGOU, Oct 27 2008 (IPS) – None of the 16 nations of West Africa will achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of reducing child mortality or improving maternal health without serious efforts to improve their health care systems, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
This assessment came during a WHO meeting in the Burkinabé capital, Ouagadougou, at the start of October which brought together the 15 member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as well as Mauritania and Algeria.
The MDGs set targets in eight key development areas to be achieved by 2015. Goal number four is to decrease mortality of children under five by two thirds. Goal number five seeks to diminish maternal mortality by three q…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Dec 20 2008 (IPS) – New cases of avian influenza across Asia in recent weeks confirm warnings that the deadly virus still lurks in the region and raise questions of gaps in efforts to contain it in affected communities.
For now, the only comfort is the speed at which the cases are being reported for local authorities to respond, say experts. Tightening of the information flow from farms and chicken coops to veterinary officials was part of the programme implemented in the region since there was a major outbreak of bird flu in the winter of 2003.
Hong Kong is grappling with an outbreak of the H5N1 virus that struck chickens last week. The infected poultry, kept in a farm equipped with modern biosecurity measures, resulted in the culling of…
Joshua Kyalimpa
Katosi, UGANDA, Mar 21 2009 (IPS) – Uganda spends close to $10 million each year treating waterborne diseases; the productive time lost to illness and caring for the sick has an even greater financial impact. But residents of Katosi village on the shores of Lake Victoria aren t waiting for the government to find a solution.
Members of the Katosi Women Development Trust building a cistern to store rainwater. Credit: …
Miriam Mannak
CAPE TOWN, Apr 21 2009 (IPS) – The quality of South African public health services cannot improve if community-based organisations (CBOs) are not given a greater role in shaping, developing and implementing national and provincial health policies.
This was one of the key demands CBOs made at a health summit at the University of Cape Town (UCT) on Apr. 17 and 18.
We can only improve the situation in our health care system if we work together, said Damaris Fritz, chairperson of the Cape Metro Health Forum, a network of CBOs working within Cape Town s health sector and the gathering s main organiser.
People who work at grassroots level know best what communities need, yet government often tends to make decisions without consulting them, she added.…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, May 19 2009 (IPS) – A year after powerful Cyclone Nargis tore through Burma s Irrawaddy Delta and southern Rangoon, killing tens of thousands of people, nature continues to play a cruel trick on survivors.
It has led to thousands of villagers still left without access to clean water, a situation that is rare in natural disasters of similar magnitude. In Indonesia s northern province of Aceh, which was flattened by the 2004 tsunami, clean water was restored to the survivors within the first year.
The problem in Burma stems from the challenge to clean the large ponds that serve as a major source of water for the villages spread across the nearly 18,500 square kilometres that was affected by the cyclone in the early hours of May 3, 2008.
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Thalif Deen interviews DR. BINDESHWAR PATHAK, the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize laureate
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 21 2009 (IPS) – In India, many moons ago, nobody dared talk about toilets a subject that was taboo, particularly at mealtime.
Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak Credit: Sulabh Sanitation Movement
Those who were employed to clean toilets were treated as untouchables and designated human scavengers , says Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, who has been named winner of the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize.
They were not allowed to mingle with other people or have soci…