Zadie Neufville* – IPS/IFEJ
KINGSTON, Dec 20 2010 (IPS) – The recent successes of local medicinal researchers have turned the spotlight on local laws that fail to protect Jamaica s rich biological diversity.
The breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) from which Dr. Lawrence Williams and his research partner isolated a compound for treatmen…
Kanya D’Almeida interviews DR. BABATUNDE OSOTIMEHIN, executive director of UNFPA
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 3 2011 (IPS) – Before the end of 2011 there will be more humans on earth than in all of the planet s 4.5-billion-year history. As the world steels itself to support its seven billion-strong population, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, the new executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), greets the impending challenges with gusto.
Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
Armed with a total budget of close to 900 million dolla…
Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Mar 14 2011 (IPS) – The Kenyatta International Conference Centre resembled one big nursery with parents and their crying babies. Hundreds of parents with their infants thronged the Centre where they received their first shot against pneumonia, and not even their tears as the shot broke through their skin could dampen the smiling faces of their mothers.
The mothers waited patiently for their infants turn to be vaccinated as the painful shot represents a chance to survive a disease that many children have not been lucky to withstand.
We ve started the global rollout of these (pneumonia) vaccines that will save thousands of children s lives. It is a very exciting day, said Helen Evans, interim CEO of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisa…
Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Apr 5 2011 (IPS) – Dengue infections and deaths here have declined significantly this year.
A health worker fumigates suspected mosquito breeding grounds in Colombo. Credit: Sanka Gayashan/IPS
We are seeing the results of a new campaign against dengue now, Pabha Palihawadena, director of the health ministry s epidemiology unit, told IPS.
During the first 12 weeks of the year, only 2,947 infections and 29 deaths were reported island-wide. …
Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, May 9 2011 (IPS) – Sub-Saharan African countries have claimed nine of the ten bottom places in a ranking of maternal health around the world. The Mothers Index , a new survey of motherhood by Save the Children, analyses health, education and economic conditions for women and children in 164 countries.
Motorcycle…
Portia Crowe
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2011 (IPS) – As world leaders gather in New York for a high-level conference on HIV/AIDS, United Nations agency heads, goodwill ambassadors and activists alike hope they will remember the virus s most vulnerable victims: women and girls.
Michelle Bachelet, head of UN Women, speaks at the special event HIV Priorities for Positive Change: In Wom…
Joshua Kyalimpa
KAMPALA , Jun 21 2011 (IPS) – The nurse at Najembe Health Centre in Buikwe district says the centre s supply of malaria drugs will be finished in two days. A malaria epidemic has hit the area and the demand for the drugs is high. But the centre, which serves the entire sub-county, will have to wait up to six weeks before their supply will be replenished.
The health centre gets supplies from the Kawolo district referral hospital every two months and last received supplies at the end of May. The next supply will only be delivered at the end of July. Meanwhile, staff from the centre cannot make a special request to either the district hospital or the National Medical Stores for drugs that are in short supply. So those patients in need of anti-malarial drugs will …
Mario Osava
CUIABÁ, Brazil, Jul 25 2011 (IPS) – Brazil sets acceptable drinking water limits for 22 different types of pesticides and fertilisers, 13 heavy metals, 13 solvents and six disinfectants. However, these are sometimes exceeded for economic reasons or due to inadequate monitoring.
Up to 1977, health authorities decreed that water for human consumption could not contain residues of more than 12 toxic agricultural chemicals or 10 metals, with no further details.
Since then the regulations have been updated twice, in 1990 and 2004, with amendments that have legalised residues of new chemical inputs used in agriculture and industry, complained Dr. Wanderlei Pignati, a professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT).
The European Union, in contr…
Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 26 2011 (IPS) – Experts and activists are calling for the reinstatement of the ban on casinos in Mexico, saying they foment not only problem gambling but also links to organised crime. The debate was revived after at least 52 people were killed in a fire set by armed men in the Casino Royale in Monterrey.
The best thing would be to close them down, because they are leading to serious cases of corruption, former gambler Carlos del Moral, the founder of the Centro de Atención de Ludopatía y Crecimiento Integral (CALCI), a treatment centre for pathological gamblers, told IPS. This is an extremely serious social problem. Casinos fuel addiction.
The casino that was torched Thursday evening in the capital of the northeastern state of Nuevo …
Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Oct 12 2011 (IPS) – A newborn baby dies every four minutes in Pakistan. It was not always so. With a sound population policy set out in the 1950s, Pakistan was second only to Sri Lanka in infant and neonatal survival rates during the 1960s and 1970s (compared to Bangladesh, India, Iran and Nepal).
But the country has seen considerable sliding down of its health indicators for mothers, infants and newborns.
According to a study spanning 20 years, conducted by the World Health Organisation, Save the Children and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and published in the medical journal PLoS Medicine on Aug. 30, Pakistan is one of five countries in the world that account for more than half of all neonatal deaths the others are India,…