Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Apr 22 2009 (IPS) – The Swazi government s slow response to a fast-growing tuberculosis epidemic has eroded the possibility of controlling it.
Themba Dlamini, the National TB Control Programme manager, says there has been a nearly ten-fold increase in the last 20 years from about 1 000 TB cases per year in 1987 to over 9,600 cases in 2007. Swaziland also has the world s highest HIV prevalence rate; people living with HIV/AIDS are significantly more vulnerable to catching tuberculosis.
This escalation of TB cases can be attributed to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, said Dlamini. 80 percent of the TB cases are also co-infected with HIV.
The country is falling short of meeting the World Health Organisation (WHO) TB treatment rate of 85 percent. …
Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, May 19 2009 (IPS) – The first step towards a massive global health prevention mechanism, under which billions of people around the world could be vaccinated against the H1N1 influenza virus while a handful of transnational pharmaceutical corporations raked in the profits was taken Tuesday parallel to the World Health Assembly.
The World Health Organisastion (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on influenza A vaccines estimated that if the current outbreak turns into a full-fledged global pandemic, 4.9 billion doses of a vaccine would be needed.
An approximate idea of the numbers involved emerges from a comparison with the price of the vaccine against the common seasonal flu, which costs around 10 dollars per dose in the United Sta…
Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN, Jul 21 2009 (IPS) – If developing countries want to succeed in improving their health systems, they urgently need to decentralise them and shift tasks from doctors to nurses and community health workers, said experts at the Fifth International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Cape Town.
Professor Alan Whiteside, director of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD) of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, agreed: We probably have as much money as we re gonna get, so we have to spend more wisely.
He believes holding international organisations as well as national governments accountable for their spending on health is absolutely critical to monitor in what areas money was spent and e…
BALI, Aug 15 2009 (IPS) – Why is the popular drug Viagra so praised for its virtues, while the condom is vilified by conservative religious groups among others the world over?
Both are ‘external technological interventions that relate to sexual activity. They are among the most prominent tools in the area of reproductive health and sexuality.
But it is the gender and sexual ideologies behind them especially when combined with conservative religious forces and aspects of patriarchal culture that put them on opposite ends of the spectrum of public acceptance.
The result is a paradox that has huge implications for public health, especially in relation to the HIV and AIDS pandemic that is now entering its third decade and affects 33 million people worldwide.
A…
Athar Parvaiz
KATHMANDU, Sep 20 2009 (IPS) – As the Copenhagen Conference on climate change draws nearer, South Asia, which appears poised for severe threats from the impacts of climate change, faces a stiff challenge on two fronts.
For one, South Asia s member states home to half the world s poor need to convince the developed world to take steps toward the mitigation of future climate-related risks in the region.
For another, divergence of ideas among these countries over some crucial issues arising from the impact of this global concern on the region is a potential stumbling block to training some of the global climate change spotlight on South Asia.
The region will need to lobby hard during the Copenhagen summit in December to get the support they need, gi…
Letuka Mahe
MASERU, Nov 5 2009 (IPS) – Fifteen-year-old Ntsebeng Tlokotsi* sighs with relief as she is given 140 dollars. Along with it she receives a bag of maize meal and cooking oil. It is a government handout, and she qualifies for this only because both her parents are dead.
Ntsebeng Tlokotsi is one of the first 5,000 beneficiaries of Lesotho’s new child grant. Credit: Letuka Mahe/IPS
Tlokotsi s mother died four years ago, and her f…
Analysis by Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Dec 1 2009 (IPS) – As the global community observes World AIDS Day today, India is caught in a rancorous debate about a government scheme which mandates that all pregnant women in the country be tested for HIV so that its 1.2 billion people can have an AIDS-free generation .
The controversial scheme was initiated in October by the ‘Parliamentary Forum on HIV and AIDS , instituted in 2000 to help the government formulate public health policies. According to the Forum, (p)assing the disease to a newborn is a human rights violation. This should stop The newborn should not suffer lifelong without committing any sin as this is a human rights violation. Predictably, the scheme has stirred up a hornet s nest with activists raging that mandatory tes…
TOKYO, Jan 8 2010 (IPS) – Japan may be one the world biggest economies, but it is not immune to poverty.
Poverty has long existed in Japan and it is deteriorating in scale and depth dramatically in the past several years, says Dr. Aya Abe, senior researcher of the Department of International Research and Cooperation at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo.
Today, many children are living under extraordinary levels of poverty in Japan, as data show, he says.
According to Masanori Matsumura, a primary school teacher for 30 years, a growing number of children in Japan today cannot even afford classroom supplies such as paints or craft materials. He adds, The expanding poverty is hitting the most vulnerable victims – children. <…