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…
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…