Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2010 (IPS) – Bad water kills more people than wars or earthquakes, declares Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
The devastating earthquake in Haiti last January claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, making it one of the biggest single natural disasters this year.
But in contrast, some 3.6 million people including 1.5 million children are estimated to die each year from water-related diseases, including diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery.
As the United Nations commemorates World Water Day next week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says clean water has become scarce and will become even scarcer with the onset of climate change.
More people die from un…
Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Apr 22 2010 (IPS) – Already on dialysis, Sukhil Johal was told by her doctors in the United States that she needed a kidney transplant. But they also told her that it would probably take 10 years before a suitable one could be found for her.
Unwilling to wait that long, Johal headed for what was then known as the world s kidney bazaar: Pakistan.
That was in 2008. Johal, now 47 and working as a beautician in Britain, is healthy. But non-Pakistanis who may be in need of an organ transplant as she once did may now find it harder to replicate her medical experience here.
At least that is what many doctors and government officials are saying more than a month after President Ali Zardari signed the historic human organ and tissue tr…
WASHINGTON, May 24 2010 (IPS) – With only five years left to meet the Millennium Development Goals 2015 deadline for reducing child mortality, progress toward that goal may be coming faster than was previously thought.
Past studies have indicated many countries are not moving quickly enough toward the goal of a two-thirds reduction in deaths of children under five years old, but a new study sees an acceleration of this reduction in several low-income countries.
The study, published online Monday by the British medical journal The Lancet, finds that 7.7 million children under five are projected to die this year down from the 11.9 million who died in 1990.
While other studies have also pointed to decreasing child mortality rates, this study finds the most dramatic dec…
Mehru Jaffer
VIENNA, Jul 26 2010 (IPS) – The global conference on AIDS in Vienna last week will be remembered for Broken Promises Kill , a slogan echoed by a coalition of activists who had gathered from around the world.
Throughout the week-long conference, demonstrators clamoured for attention to the funding crisis severely impacting the global fight against AIDS.
It is important to bring the urgency faced by the AIDS crisis to as many people as possible, Dr. Nafis Sadik, United Nations special envoy to AIDS in the Asia and Pacific region told IPS as she sidled past a crowd of demonstrators.
This noise is to force people to recognise the crisis. It is not a party. It is a meet to confront AIDS, health and the failure of governments to live up to their respo…
Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 23 2010 (IPS) – What was initially announced as a government ban on sales of junk food in schools has failed to keep fried and sugary foods out of the classrooms to which Mexico s 25 million primary and secondary students returned Monday after summer break.
The aim of the regulations is to fight a growing obesity epidemic. But nutritionists and consumer groups say the guidelines are not strict or rigorous enough.
The guidelines on food that can be sold at shops in public and private schools in Mexico, which will become binding on Jan. 1, 2010, were issued by the governmental Federal Council for Regulatory Reform (COFEMER).
The regulations are a necessary, but not sufficient, step, Bernardo Ávila, a researcher at the National Nutr…
Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Sep 16 2010 (IPS) – Twenty-nine-year-old Ramy shuddered as he described the years he has spent addicted to heroin. Lying to his family, stealing from friends to scrape together the money to feed his addiction until a few months ago, that was the life he led.
A drug user comes for his methadone dose, hopefully on the way out of the drug habit. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS
But after joining Cambodia s first methadone maintenance treatment (MMT…
IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 8 2010 (IPS) – As nearly 25 years of development of a malaria vaccine come to fruition, health authorities across Africa will need to come to grips with how to effectively introduce it.
Malaria accounts for 20 percent of deaths of young children in Africa. Credit: Julien Harnels/Wikicommons
Phase III testing of a malaria vaccine involving up to 16,000 infants in seven African countries has begun; success could see a vaccine…
Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Dec 13 2010 (IPS) – A plan to establish waste-to-energy plants in New Delhi as part of a carbon- trading programme has run into fierce opposition over hazards posed by toxic chemical byproducts.
Biomedical waste incinerator in the midst of Sukhdev Vihar in New Delhi. Credit: Ranjit Devraj /IPS
The government is mistaken if it believes that the citizens of Delhi are unaware of environmental issues, Gopal Krishna, convenor of the Toxics Alliance Wat…
Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Jan 26 2011 (IPS) – Pakistan became the world s top polio-endemic country in 2010 and is now the biggest source of the polio virus to countries declared polio-free many years ago. Due to the unrestricted movement of children along the long and porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, both countries have begun to put in place a joint strategy to stem the tide of the ailment.
About 200,000 children cross the border every year, said Rasheed Juma, director-general of health in Pakistan. Thousands of these children are not administered oral polio vaccine (OPV).
Ministers of health from Pakistan and Afghanistan have established a cross- border coordination committee to consider the operational challenges in tackling the transmission of polio in high-tr…
Elizabeth Whitman
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 31 2011 (IPS) – A new report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released Thursday found progress in combating HIV/AIDS worldwide to be promising, yet inadequate to meet the needs of the 33.3 million people estimated to be living with HIV in 2009.
The report, entitled Uniting for universal access: towards zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS- related deaths, assessed major obstacles in the path to this ideal world.
The secretary-general listed five recommendations to help bridge the gap between this vision and the reality for people living with HIV/AIDS, calling for a prevention revolution that relies upon the energy of young people and new methods of communication to empower people to protect themselves fr…