David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Jun 26 2007 (IPS) – The European Union is failing to prioritise health and education in its plans for spending aid in poor countries, according to a new study.
Between this year and 2013 nearly 23 billion euros (31 billion dollars) from the European Development Fund is to given to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc. Officials working for the EU s executive arm, the European Commission, are currently finalising a series of country strategy papers to determine how this aid should be used.
Sixty-one of the draft papers have been analysed by Alliance2015, a coalition of anti-poverty networks, which found that just two of these aid plans propose to make health a priority sector and only five contain such a suggestion for education.
Barin Masoud
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2007 (IPS) – Josephine, young and pregnant, had just felt her water break. She arrived at the doors of St. Mary s Hospital in Langata, Kenya ready to give birth to her first child. But the throbbing pain of delivery was just the start of her troubles.
A run-down maternity clinic in Oyugis, Kenya that has since been revamped …
Ruth Ansah Ayisi
NHAMATANDA, Central Mozambique, Aug 29 2007 (IPS) – A swelling crowd of people has gathered at the rural health centre at Monte Xiluvo in Nhamatanda district, in the central Mozambican province of Sofala. Most are mothers with young children who try to protect themselves from the gusty winds as they wait for their consultation with Caetano Mendosa, the nurse responsible for the centre.
Fina Miguel (left), performing her daily chore of collecting water. Credit: Ruth …
Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Oct 1 2007 (IPS) – A further 9.7 billion dollars agreed last week for a global fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria may still not be enough.
Developed countries, financial institutions and private companies agreed the new funding for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM) at a meeting here. The funding covers 2008-2011.
Since its creation in 2002, the Fund will have channelled some 4.7 billion dollars until next year into health campaigns across the globe to fight the three diseases.
We have saved some two million lives over the past five years, GFATM director Michel Kazatchkine told the meeting.
The GFATM has over this period provided grants for 450 programmes in 136 countries. These programmes in…
Aaron Glantz
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 17 2007 (IPS) – On Sep. 19, Kay McMullen had the last conversation she ever would with her son, Gerald Cassidy, or G.J., as he was known to his family and friends.
Sgt. Gerald G.J. Cassidy Credit: Cassidy Family
A sergeant in the Indiana National Guard, G.J. had been injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb in June 2006. He returned to the U.S. five months ago, and was receiving inpatient medical care through the Wounded Warrior Transition Programme at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
As they talked on the phone, the 32-year-old father of two com…
Zofeen Ebrahim
SEOUL, Nov 24 2007 (IPS) – The one message that came across at the just concluded general assembly of the World Toilet Association (WTA) was that conventional flush toilets are not only environment unfriendly but are also a serious public health hazard.
Experts Mamit (left) and Gijzen (right) advocate an end to flush toilets. Credit: Kyung Eun
And while the United Nations estimates that 2.6 billion people are living without proper sanitation and without access to potable wat…
Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Jan 4 2008 (IPS) – A group of civil society activists has called for immediate boycott of Uzbek cotton produced by forced child labour.
Unlike other developing countries, they say, child labour in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan is not the result of poverty but of a coercion policy adopted by the central government.
Under the Soviet Union, forced labour was accompanied by some care for the health of children, the quality of their nutrition, and development of the rural social infrastructure, Nadejda Atayeva, president of the Paris-based group Human Rights in Central Asia told IPS on email. Now forced labour is compensated neither by decent payment, nor through public funds.
Every year, starting September, schools across the count…
Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Feb 8 2008 (IPS) – The arrest of Indian kidney transplant racketeer Amit Kumar alias Santosh Raut has lifted the lid off a huge well-ramified illicit international organ trading ring with operations running into billions of dollars across several countries.
Kumar, who was tracked down in a resort in neighbouring Nepal on Thursday, has been absconding from the law since Jan. 24, when the police raided his clinic in a Delhi suburb and arrested his associates. He is thought to have been responsible for some 600 illegal kidney transplants.
The global kidney transplant racket is one of the most obnoxious manifestations of North-South inequality and of the repugnant practice of stealing organs from the poorest of the poor in the Third World, usually…
Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, Mar 7 2008 (IPS) – Women have launched a renewed campaign in Italy against a move to overturn the right to abortion.
Women scientists, intellectuals and professionals are asking women to oppose a new clerical assault on women. They are fighting attempts by centre-right politicians and Catholic doctors associations to limit the current abortion law.
The law, upheld in a 1978 referendum, allows abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and until the 24th week if the mother s life is at risk or if the foetus is seriously malformed.
Its opponents say the law should be restricted in light of medical advances allowing survival of some foetuses born before 24 weeks.
Debate and demonstrations over the law followed a call by Giuliano Fer…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 18 2008 (IPS) – North Korea s desperate need to feed its citizens has prompted a United Nations agency to warn of a humanitarian crisis looming up in the months ahead.
The price of basic food items in Pyongyang, the country s capital, offers a stark picture of the reality average workers face when buying provisions. A kg of rice currently sells at 2,000 North Korean won (14 US dollars), up from 700-900 won a year ago, while maize costs 600 won (4.20 dollars) per kg, up from 350 won for the same amount in April 2007, states the World Food Programme (WFP).
Other staples, such as pork, potatoes and eggs have also risen manifold, making these items a luxury for most people, adds the WFP. A kg of pork now sells at 5,500 won (35 dollars), a…