Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Nov 19 2007 (IPS) – New species of insects have begun to establish themselves all across Europe, raising concerns about the impact of global warming on biodiversity and public health.
The school in Dorsten, a village near the German border with Belgium, had to be closed down recently because oak processionary caterpillars had infested the schoolyard, and teachers and parents were afraid of the health consequences for the students.

The massive presence of these caterpillars in Germany is a very recent consequence of climate change, Stefanie Hahn, a biologist at the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Forestry, told IPS. Because its presence is so recent, we have no systematic information on their evolution among us, Hahn stressed.

These bug…

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 20 2007 (IPS) – Racing to adjourn for the year, the U.S. Congress this week approved a 560- billion-dollar omnibus 2008 appropriation that includes 70 billion dollars more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and sizable increases in development, refugee, and disaster assistance.
The bill, which President George W. Bush is expected to sign into law later this week, provides for a nearly 50 percent increase to 4.66 billion dollars in spending on fighting diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, that particularly afflict developing countries.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multilateral facility to which the administration has been reluctant to contribute, will get a record 845 million dollars, 120…

Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador, Feb 1 2008 (IPS) – Peasant farmers from the northern Salvadoran province of Cabañas fear that mining operations planned for the region will consume 30,000 litres of water a day, drawn from the same sources that currently provide local residents with water only once a week.
Environmentalists and experts have also warned that if the operations that are now awaiting legal permission actually begin, the cyanide that would be used by the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim to extract gold and silver could contaminate the area s groundwater and soil.

Cabañas ranks second only to Morazán as the province with the highest rate of poverty in this country, where over 55 percent of the population officially lives under the poverty line…

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: …