This story is part two of a three-part series on how social and economic inequalities impact cancer treatment. The third installment examines how Peru’s Plan Esperanza is providing comprehensive treatment for cancer patients, especially the poor.
The King Hussein Cancer Centre, Jordan’s premier cancer treatment facility located in Amman, is being expanded to double its capacity as national and regional cancer rates continue to rise. Credit: Elizabeth Whitman/IPS
AMMAN, Apr 10 2014 (IPS) – The concrete skeleton of a twin 13-storey complex towers over surrounding buildings on one of Amman s busiest streets. The ongoing expansion of the King Hussein Cancer …
In Nepal, 38 percent of the population still defecates in the open. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2014 (IPS) – At the height of his election campaign last October, Narendra Modi, India s Hindu nationalist leader, briefly set aside his spiritual aspirations when he told a surprised audience that economic development should take precedence over religion.
Toilets before temples, pleaded Modi, the newly-elected prime minister of India, a country which has been in the throes of a perpetual sanitation crisis, and where open defecation is an all-too-common sight in villages and urban slums.
As chief minister of the state of Gujarat, M…
A medical centre at the Bandama checkpoint in Kenema to test people in transit for symptoms of Ebola. Credit: Mohamed Fofanah/IPS
KENEMA, Sierra Leone, Jul 12 2014 (IPS) – Adikali Kamara is a 36-year-old student nurse working in the government hospital in Kenema, a sprawling town on the fringe of the Sierra Leone’s Gola tropical rain forest.
On June 19, he began feeling unwell, complaining of fever and a headache, and went to a chemist near where he lived to buy anti-malaria drugs and antibiotics to treat typhoid fever. “I thought that my symptoms…
Adolescent girls in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district meet once a week to discuss their rights. Here they talk about sanitation and personal hygiene. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
RANGPUR, Bangladesh, Aug 25 2014 (IPS) – Until five years ago, Shima Aktar, a student in Gajaghanta village in the Rangpur district of Bangladesh, about 370 km northwest of the capital Dhaka, was leading a normal life. But when her father decided that it was time for her to conform to purdah, a religious practice of female seclusion, things changed.
The young girl, now 16 years old, says her father pulled her out of school at the age of 11 and began to lay plans for her marriage to an older man �…
A man walks through agricultural land in the village of Mirusuvil, in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS
KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka, Oct 3 2014 (IPS) – Gazing out over the parched earth of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, one might think these farmlands have not seen water in years. In fact, this is not too far from the truth.
The World Food Programme (WFP) last month allocated 2.5 million dollars to assist hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans in the throes of an 11-month drought that has shown no signs of abating.
A billboard in Freetown, Sierra Leone, urging people to go to hospital to be tested for HIV. Ebola has stopped people from doing that. Credit: Lansana Fofana/IPS
FREETOWN, Dec 1 2014 (IPS) – The outbreak of the deadly Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone has dwarfed the campaign against HIV/AIDS, to the extent that patients no longer go to hospitals and treatment centres out of fear of contracting the Ebola virus.
“It is a big challenge for us. HIV/AIDS patients now fear going to hospitals for treatment and our workers, who a…
Zimbabwe struggles to contain maternity deaths. Here in this southern African nation, the number of women dying in childbirth continues to rise. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS
HARARE, Jan 30 2015 (IPS) – For 47-year-old Albert Mangwendere from Mutoko, a district 143 kilometres east of Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, transporting his three pregnant wives using a wheelbarrow to a local clinic has become routine, with his wives delivering babies one after the other.
But these routines have not always been a source of joy for Mangwendere.
“Over the past twenty years, I have been ferrying my pregnant wives to a local clinic using a wheelbarrow because I have no …
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2015 (IPS) – Nine million children live in areas affected by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, while thousands have lost parents to the virus, according to a new report from The United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF).
More than 24,000 people, including 5,000 children, have been infected with Ebola since the latest strain broke out in January 2014, eventually affecting large areas of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than 10,000 people have died.
While reports of new cases have slowed to a trickle, UNICEF has warned Africa and the international community to not become complacent about the virus, and highlighted its devastating effect on children in affected countries.
The , released Monday, states the mortality rate for children under…
A baby cries in his mother’s lap while being inoculated against measles by Vaccinator Joseph Kamara, at Tagweh Town Community Clinic in Bomi County, Liberia. Credit: UNICEF
DAKAR, May 4 2015 (IPS) – As Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work to end Ebola, critical healthcare services damaged by the epidemic are beginning to be revitalised.
Supported by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the three countries worst-hit by the disease have begun a campaign to immunise three million children ag…
In public hospitals in Costa Rica, like the Rafael Ángel Calderón hospital in San José, there is no protocol regulating legal therapeutic abortion, for doctors to follow. As a result, physicians restrict the practice to a minimum, leaving women without their right to terminate a pregnancy when their health is at risk. Credit: Die…