Ruth Ansah Ayisi

MAPUTO, Jan 29 2006 (IPS) – Travel the length of Mozambique, and chances are that you ll hear a host of different languages being spoken: the official language of Portuguese, Shangana, Elomwe and Cisena to name just a few.
While this might be culturally interesting, it also presents health authorities with challenges when planning AIDS prevention messages and information campaigns. Which languages should be given preference with these initiatives? Do all of Mozambique s languages lend themselves to frank speech about HIV or do some require the topic to be approached in a more subtle way?

Linguist Esmeralda Xavier has been assessing how language is used to transmit AIDS messages, and whether translations between the various tongues are sensitive to cul…

Mithre J. Sandrasagra

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2006 (IPS) – Obstetric fistula is a preventable and treatable injury caused by several days of obstructed labour, without timely medical intervention. But the consequences of the pervasive disability are life shattering the baby usually dies, and the woman is left with chronic incontinence.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that more than two million women are living with fistula in developing countries and an additional 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occur each year.

These WHO estimates are based on the number of women seeking treatment, and are likely to be gross underestimates.

The estimates were also made in 1989.

There are no new statistics because the problem of fistula is a neglec…

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 6 2006 (IPS) – There is a critical shortage of health workers doctors, nurses and lab technicians in poor countries, which most desperately need them, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned in its annual report on global health problems.
A shortage of human resources has replaced financial issues as the most serious obstacle to implementing national HIV treatment plans, says the report.

The WHO is so alarmed at the health workforce crisis that it went so far as to advise the countries facing the severest deficits of health service providers to disregard conditions set by the multilateral lenders.

WHO Assistant Director General Timothy Evans said We have to ensure that hiring ceilings related to the fiscal conditionalities of …

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Jun 6 2006 (IPS) – The plot of the film Sleeping with the Enemy is not fictional in essence. Close to 70 percent of all the women killed in one year in Peru died at the hands of their husbands, partners, lovers or boyfriends, and the murders were committed at home or in a place that was frequented by the couple.
Violence against women has reached alarming levels in Latin America. More than 300 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in the last 11 years, while in Guatemala, 500 women suffered the same fate in the 2000-2004 period. Peru s case is also dramatic, to the point that people have begun to talk of femicide, or the murder of a person based on the fact of the victim s being female.

But the biggest danger is not out on the street. …

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jul 18 2006 (IPS) – An independent commission launched in New Delhi aims to get leaders of Asia-Pacific countries to stand up and take note of the daunting challenge posed by the spread of HIV/AIDS -including increased poverty and development setbacks.
The political leadership in this region is not alive to the fact that a large number of people are infected and that will have socio-economic consequences, J.V.R. Prasada Rao, director of the Joint United Nations Programme of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Asia-Pacific office, told IPS. We have to find new ways of dealing with this issue and provoking interest.

For one, smaller countries in the region with a growing number of people with HIV/AIDS must be told what the socio-economic cost of the pandem…

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Aug 25 2006 (IPS) – The revelation that commercial rice in the United States was found to be contaminated with an unlicensed genetically engineered strain shows how easily the food supply in the United States and in countries importing U.S. food can be tainted, watchdog groups say.
The long grain rice that was found to contain trace amounts of genetically engineered (GE) Liberty Link Rice 601, produced by the agro-chemical giant Bayer CropScience and never intended for commercial release, was immediately banned in Japan.

The United States is responsible for 12 percent of the global rice trade and many countries rely on U.S. rice to feed their people.

The main importers of U.S. rice are Mexico, Central America, Saudi Arabia, Canada and So…