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,…
Pavol Stracansky
KIEV, Nov 29 2011 (IPS) – Ukrainian authorities are launching a massive nationwide project to transform the country s dangerous and inefficient waste disposal network as officials admit the former Soviet state is facing an ecological catastrophe .
Ukraine incinerates or recycles less than five percent of the more than 50 million tonnes of domestic waste produced in the country each year. Some 50 percent to 70 percent of all urban waste is recycled on average in the rest of Europe.
The remainder of the Ukraine s waste is dumped in more than 4,000 landfill sites that not only take up 7 percent of the country s land area more than its national parks combined but which, according to state environmental bodies, fail to meet even the most basic of environme…
KANDAHAR, Jan 26 2012 (IPS) – A red flare lights up the moonless night at a remote military outpost in southern Kandahar, a signal to land for the incoming helicopter. Bordering Pakistan, this desolate strip of desert is deadly, especially during peak ‘fighting season’ every summer between NATO-ISAF military forces and the Taliban.
A gunner in an MRAP. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS.
U.S. troops with a stretcher rush toward the hovering Blackhawk dispatched alongside armed ‘chaser’ helicopters from Kandahar Air Field (KAF), a 20-minute flight away. Medics rapidly l…
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2012 (IPS) – When the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution back in September 2000 laying out eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it specified 2015 as the target date to achieve them.
But most developing nations, primarily the least developed (LDCs), have faltered in some of these goals, including a 50-percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality and environmental sustainability.
A young …
Women in Pakistan’s tribal areas show signs of mental stress. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Apr 16 2012 (IPS) – Collateral damage caused by the ‘war on terror’, prosecuted by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan since 2001, may well extend to psychological trauma sustained by thousands of women in the bordering areas of northwestern Pakistan.
The prolonged war has caused psychological problems to a majority of the residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), especially the women, says Prof. Syed Muhammad Sultan at the psychiatry department of t…
A Cholera Treatment Center in Carrefours run by MSF. For the most serious cases, seen here, patients’ lives are saved using IV hydration. Credit: Jude Stanley Roy/IPS
PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 18 2012 (IPS) – As predicted, the beginning of the rainy season in Haiti brought exponential increases in the numbers of people sickened and killed by cholera.
While the number of new cases in December was about 300 per day nationwide, this week one centre in the capital alone reported receiving 95 cases per day. And the numbers are expected to increase.
As of late April, at least 7,112 people had died and over 536,943 been made ill by the deadly water-borne dise…
The proportion of people using improved water sources rose from 76 per cent in 1990 to 89 per cent in 2010. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2012 (IPS) – An annual report card on the ambitious U.N.-led initiative known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) says that in three areas poverty, slums and water – the goals have been met ahead of the 2015 deadline, but persistent gaps remain, notably in the critical area of maternal health.
The , released Monday, also says that the ongoing financial crisis has undermined progress on many of the goals.
Some of the biggest challenges are the most difficult ones. It doesn t mean we should …
PHNOM PENH, Aug 17 2012 (IPS) – The deaths of dozens of Cambodian children in recent months from an initially undiagnosed disease has highlighted the difficult balancing act between informing the public and potentially provoking panic.
On Jul. 4 the country’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization jointly announced that they were investigating an “unknown disease” that had killed 61 out of 62 children infected since April.
“The unknown disease starts with high fever, followed by respiratory and/or neurologic symptoms with rapid deterioration of respiratory functions,” the statement said.
Just over a week later, the MOH and WHO said that the cause in most of the cases was a severe form of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). A majority of 3…
HELSINKI, Oct 4 2012 (IPS) – For half a century cardiovascular disease has been the largest killer in Western countries, but recently it has started to dominate the health statistics in the South as well. In India coronary heart disease is already the biggest killer, and strokes are about to rise to second place. Globally, cardiovascular disease now kills about 17 million people a year, and a growing number of people are having heart attacks or strokes as early as their 40s or 50s.
Risto Isomaki
This global pandemic has a number of complementary causes. People live longer, eat less healthy food, smoke more, and do less manual labour. More …