MBALE, Uganda, Aug 26 2010 (IPS) – Irene Wangolo was advised to undergo an HIV test during her antenatal visit and to return to the clinic with her husband so they could be counselled on preventing HIV transmission to their unborn baby. But her husband refused to accompany her saying it was not his business and Wangolo never returned to the clinic in Bungokho in eastern Uganda. So she missed all the services, including the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT).

Salim Kato escorts his wife to all her an…

Analysis by Antoaneta Becker

LONDON, Sep 20 2010 (IPS) – As China basks in international praise for its spectacular economic transformation over the last 30 years, some shadow sides of this story of triumph have begun to emerge.
The world s second economic powerhouse has been accused of exploiting its status of a populous developing country to claim grants and aid that would have served Africa s poorest countries better. And as it continues to receive millions of euros in aid from the European Union, China has stepped up its own foreign aid activities in African and Latin American countries in order to bolster its long-term economic interests and secure energy and mineral resources.

China surpassed Japan as the world s second-largest economy last quarter, crowning the…

Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 11 2010 (IPS) – A high-level commission has been set up to look into appalling medical experiments carried out by U.S. researchers on hundreds of Guatemalans in the 1940s, and the government of this Central American country is debating alternative ways for the United States to make reparations.
These acts should be condemned and the case brought to trial, Amílcar Pop, an indigenous Guatemalan lawyer, told IPS. We need to repudiate what happened and condemn the attitudes that made it possible. Humanity has evolved and these actions cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. What the United States did was a crime against humanity.

In an Oct. 1 statement, the U.S. government acknowledged that between 1946 and 1948, U.S. medical …

Arsène Séverin

BRAZZAVILLE, Nov 12 2010 (IPS) – An emergency vaccination campaign against polio begins Nov. 12 in the Republic of Congo, where an epidemic centred on the southern city of Pointe-Noire has killed at least 100 people since the beginning of October.

Administering oral vaccine: a risk of polio epidemics remains as long as the disease exists anywhere in the world. Credit: IRIN

According to Congolese heal…

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…