Sierra Leone and Liberia alone could have a total of more than 20,000 new cases of Ebola within six weeks and as many as 1.4 million by Jan. 20, 2015, if the virus continues spreading at its current rate. Credit: European Commission DG ECHO/CC-BY-ND-2.0
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS) – Despite mounting pledges of assistance, the continuing spread of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa is outpacing regional and international efforts to stop it, according to world leaders and global health experts.
“We are not moving fast enough. We are not doing enough,” declared U.S. President Barack Obama at a special meeting on the Ebola crisis at the United Nati…
Students at Columbia University carry mattresses on the Carry That Weight National Day of Action to show their support for survivors of sexual assault. Credit: Warren Heller
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2014 (IPS) – “A recurring nightmare for me is I’m trying to tell someone something and they are not listening. I’m yelling at the top of my lungs and it feels like there is a glass wall between us.”
Jasmin Enriquez is a two-time survivor of rape. Like two-thirds of rape survivors, Enriquez knew her rapists. The first was her boyfriend when she was a high school senior, the second a fellow student she had been seeing at college.”What I hear from women i…
Globally, coal production and coal power account for 44 percent of carbon emissions annually. Credit: Bigstock
SYDNEY, Mar 11 2015 (IPS) – With less than a year to go before the United Nation’s annual climate change meeting scheduled to take place in Paris in November 2015, citizens and civil society groups are pushing their elected leaders to take stock of national commitments to lower carbon emissions in a bid to cap runaway global warming.
Industrialised countries’ trade, investment and environment policies are under the microscope, with per capita emissions from the U.S., Canada and Australia each topping 20 tonnes of carbon annually, double the …
LONDON, Apr 24 2015 (IPS) – The multinational education and publishing company Pearson PLC was challenged during its annual general meeting on Apr. 24 by representatives of civil society and trade union groups over various profit-driven programmes aimed at expanding private education in numerous countries in the global South.
As people arrived at the AGM, they were greeted by protesters with placards saying ‘Education is a right, not a commodity’ and ‘Stop cashing in on kids’.
In an to the Pearson board published Apr. 24, civil society groups and trade unions including , the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) wrote that the company’s “activities around the world …
Patient undergoing dialysis treatment at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. Credit: Rebecca Vassie
KAMPALA, Jun 15 2015 (IPS) – Vincent Mugyenyi, a 65-year-old retired pilot from the Ugandan Air Force, has lost count of how many dialysis treatment slots he has had to attend in the eight years he has been fighting chronic kidney disease.
He spends eight hours a week on a dialysis machine in Mulago National Referral Hospital that filters toxins from his blood, performing the functions of healthy kidneys.…
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 2015 (IPS) – When world leaders adopted a set of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at a summit meeting in September 2000, one of the heavily-publicised goals was the commitment to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by the end of 2015.
But an equally important goal that drew less attention was Goal number Five aimed at improving maternal health – and reducing by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio, by the end of 2015.
A new report, released Thursday, focuses specifically on maternal deaths, which have fallen by 44 per cent since 1990— described as a significant improvement, but still falling short of total success.
World-wide, maternal deaths dropped from about 532,000 in 1990 to an estimated 303,000 this year, according t…
Credit: Courtesy FAO
CASABLANCA, Morocco, Apr 6 2016 (IPS) – This is not a minor issue. Chickpea, faba bean, lentil, common bean, field pea, mung bean, black gram, pigeon pea, cowpea, and grass pea are the major pulse crops produced globally. And these especially play an important role in food and nutritional security and sustainable agricultural production systems in the drylands, which cover over 40 per cent of the world’s land area and are home to approximately 2.5 billion people.
“These crops are the mainstay of agriculture and diets in these regions, constituting a major source of protein for billions. With an ever-growing health conscious population, the dem…
African Heads of State during the official opening ceremony of the AfDB Annual meetings in Lusaka. Credit: Yoka | @vandvictors
LUSAKA, May 30 2016 (IPS) – “It is unacceptable that 138 years after Thomas Edison developed the light bulb, hundreds of millions of people cannot have access to electricity to simply light up the bulb in Africa,” says Africa Development Bank (AfDB) Group President, Akinwumi Adesina, mourning the gloomy statistics showing that over 645 million people in Africa lack access to electricity, while over 700 million are without clean energy for cooking.
Adesina attributes Africa’s poverty and the perennial migration of youths to …
Flint water tower. Credit: George Thomas / Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
NEW YORK, Oct 16 2016 (IPS) – When the water in Flint, Michigan was found to be corroding cars at a General Motors’ (GM) factory, government officials agreed to change the factory s water source, yet the same water source continued to poison the residents of Flint for another year.
From 17 to 20 October governments will meet in Quito, Ecuador, for , the UN s most important conference about cities, which only occurs once every 20 years. HABITAT III looks to inaugurate a new urban agenda and set down goals about how cities can and should be responsible for the wellbeing of th…
Men lounging in Dire Dawa’s Chattara Market chewing khat, Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 12 2017 (IPS) – Throughout a Sunday afternoon in the Ethiopian capital, Yemeni émigré men in their fifties and sixties arrive at a traditional Yemeni-styled mafraj room clutching bundles of green, leafy stalks: khat.
As the hours pass they animatedly discuss economics, politics, history, life and more while chewing the leaves. The gathering is a picture of civility. But in many countries khat has a bad reputation, with it either being banned or prompting calls for…