Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, May 24 2010 (IPS) – Her husband died last year, but he will be forever a guardian of biodiversity.
Guardian of Biodiversity from Brazil, Rena Martins Farias. Credit: Roberto Faidutti/IPS
Prof. César Gómez-Campo, who passed away in September 2009, was one of the first people to use seed banking for the conservation of wild plant species.
He was a pioneer in the conservation of wild plant genetic resources and he devoted his professional career to the efficient …
Esther Banales
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2010 (IPS) – Mentally disabled legal permanent residents of the United States and asylum seekers face indefinite detention, erroneous deportation, and unfair hearings in U.S. courts, according to a new joint report from two leading human rights organisations.
The report released Sunday, and co-authored by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), points out that the shoddy treatment not only violates the human rights of affected individuals but also offends both U.S. and international standards of justice.
Non-citizens with mental disabilities with a lawful basis for remaining in the U.S. are unable to represent themselves and, in 61 percent of cases, do not have a lawyer when facing the judicial proc…
Matthew O. Berger
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2010 (IPS) – The stories of Dr. Ciro de Quadros work in eradicating smallpox read like the stuff of global health legend.
Working for the World Health Organisation in Ethiopia in the early 1970s, he and his team once walked for 26 days along the remote Sudanese border region to investigate the spread of an outbreak and vaccinate those who may have come in contact with the disease.
Accessibility and communications were very difficult, he says, adding that eradication efforts there took six years, including an interruption for the overthrow of emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.
He then moved on to Somalia where transmission was eventually interrupted in 1977 and the last case of smallpox was found and contained, making it the f…
NAIROBI, Sep 15 2010 (IPS) – The number of women dying from pregnancy related causes around the world is falling. Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the most dangerous place for pregnant women, despite recording a 26 percent reduction in maternal mortality rates.
Government hospital in Makeni, Sierra Leone: reaching women in rrual areas and poor households is key to continued progre…
Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Nov 8 2010 (IPS) – At Kigali s Kibagabaga Hospital, 30 young people aged between 12 and 18 years old wait in a crowded holding room, waiting for their turn to see the doctor in charge of prescribing antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). They are among 220,000 children affected by AIDS who are benefiting from social and medical assistance from the Rwandan government and its development partners.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dec 13 2010 (IPS) – After almost a week of violent protests over preliminary elections results that left at least five dead, Haiti awoke to an eerie and tense calm Monday after a well-coordinated trial balloon was launched late Sunday night.
Men on a motorbike pass a burning campaign poster on Dec. 8, 2010. Credit: Digital.Democracy/flickr
After a rumour-filled weekend, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced that a special commission was recou…
Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Jan 26 2011 (IPS) – When an outbreak of dengue fever occurred in the hot and humid north of Australia s Queensland state in late 2008, Nicola Strange was among hundreds of locals that contracted the mosquito-borne disease.
Now, together with her husband, Nicola Strange is volunteering their property for use in a scientific field trial that researchers hope will be the next step in an ambitious plan to eradicate dengue fever, an infection that leads to thousands of deaths in tropical areas of the world every year.
I ve never felt so unwell, says Nicola, recalling her experience of type- two dengue.
Her fever lasted for a good week , with a high temperature accompanied by an intense headache, vomiting and severe pain behind her …
PARIS, Mar 31 2011 (IPS) – French economist Esther Duflo thinks poverty can be alleviated or even eradicated with the right policies. All it takes is for politicians to translate research into action, implementing programmes that have been shown to work.
French economist Esther Duflo Credit: A. D. McKenzie/IPS
But that is easier said than done. Duflo, who last year won the American Economic Association s prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, acknowledges that it is sometimes frustrating to get policy makers to apply the results of research that could impro…
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…