Pavol Stracansky
VIENNA, Feb 16 2010 (IPS) – With hundreds of thousands of girls and women believed to be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Europe, rights groups have mounted a campaign to get EU leaders to stop what they see as a barbaric and dangerous procedure.
FGM an umbrella term for procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons has been condemned by governments, rights groups and health organisations across the world.
But while many European governments have introduced laws to ban the practice, campaigners have warned that far from dying out it continues in communities across the continent and those same governments must do more to stamp it out.
…
Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Mar 22 2010 (IPS) – When there are water cuts in Bulawayo, the plants in 59-year-old Ntombizodwa Makati s vegetable garden are still watered but she and her family go thirsty.
Small scale farmers in Bulawayo are able to use recycled waste water for their crops as lack of adequate rainfall affects the region, thanks to the local city council s programme. But there are no programmes in place to provide drinking water for households in the area. Makati is one of many urban residents living in poor suburbs, in a city of two million people, who face constant and prolonged water shortages.
World Water Day is on Mar. 22, which United Nations-Water has given the theme of water quality Clean Water for a Healthy World . But water quality still remains a…
Safeeyah Kharsany interviews Dr ALAN BERNSTEIN, executive director, Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise.
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 26 2010 (IPS) – An HIV vaccine is possible if the world works together as a global community with the objective of finding one, but it will take some years to develop.
Dr Alan Bernstein believes that a HIV prevention vaccine will be found. Credit: Safeeyah Kharsany/IPS
This is according to Dr Alan Bernstein of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise.<…
Kristin Palitza
DURBAN, Jun 4 2010 (IPS) – African medical experts have realised they need to make a much bigger effort to educate rural communities if they want to effectively contain the continent s tuberculosis (TB) epidemic.
TB patient in a Kenyan hospital: community-based care and treatment is extending the reach of limited facilities and personnel. Credit: Siegfried/IRI…
LUSAKA, Jul 6 2010 (IPS) – Diana Banda* is quickly running out of excuses to give her six-year-old son about why he has to take a schedule of drugs every day.
Her son David* is HIV-positive and has been on anti-retroviral treatment (ART) for two years. But he may not learn the truth about his HIV status anytime soon as his mother thinks up one excuse after another as to why he has to religiously take the drugs.
He asks me almost every day why he has to take these same drugs all the time. At first, I told him that he had a persistent headache but when I went away for a week, he skipped (the medication) for two days and then protested that he had had no headache, said Banda, a housewife in the Zambian capital, Lusaka.
So as a family, we have now had to convince him …
KAMPALA, Jul 28 2010 (IPS) – During the three-day summit of African Union heads of state, roughly 37,000 children and 2,000 women died across Africa, mostly from preventable causes, says a civil society coalition for child and maternal health. The coalition welcomed African leaders pledge to make more resources available.
Govt hospital in Sierra Leone: civil society will watch to s…
Arsène Séverin
BRAZZAVILLE, Aug 26 2010 (IPS) – I came here out of curiosity, but I ended up taking an AIDS test. I have the results, Gerard, 30 years old, told IPS. He adds, right before leaving: The results are negative.
My brother and I knew that the van was coming here and we came as volunteers, says Judith, one of the few women in the ranks of those who came to be in Kinsoundi, a neighbourhood in south Brazzaville, the Congolese capital.
We have already done over 50 tests, and there s still a crowd waiting, Dr. Wilfrid Hervé Poaty pointed out to IPS. Hervé manages the mobile screening unit, a van purchased in December 2009 by the National Council Against AIDS (known by its French acronym, CNLS) in Congo.
Each of the van s appearances in public plac…
TSHWANE, South Africa, Sep 17 2010 (IPS) – Without contributions from well wishers and government grants of between 68 and 104 dollars per month per child, the House of Mother and Child in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg, would barely be able to provide for the 18 vulnerable children who call the place home.
Ear to the ground: MP3s on MDGs
, says development economist John Rook.
Brian Moonga takes a look at .
, reports Grant Fuller.
Lansana Fofana reports on .
Eunice Wanjiru speaks to women in rural Rwanda about .
Mustapha Muhammad considers the practice of .
, says continent’s Millennium Campaign chief
(To listen to more IPS Africa audio, .)
The safe house is home to 18 orphans, of which seven are AIDS orphans, while others are surviv…
Peter Boaz
WASHINGTON, Oct 11 2010 (IPS) – With the number of hungry people growing to more than a billion last year, the world is nowhere near reaching the objectives outlined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to the latest Global Hunger Index (GHI) released Monday.
The first MDG to halve the proportion of hungry people between 1990 and 2015 is an unlikely hope, says the 2010 GHI report.
Though the percentage of undernourished people fell from 20 percent in 1990-92 to 16 percent in 2004-06, recent global events have reversed that progress. The widespread economic recession and lingering effects of the 2007-08 global food crisis saw the number of undernourished people surpass one billion in 2009.
The GHI, a multidimensional measure of globa…
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 11 2010 (IPS) – One of the world s biggest health threats is also one of the least recognised more than 100 million people who literally breathe and eat toxic pollutants like lead, mercury, chromium every day, according to the first-ever detailed assessment.
Kids playing in contaminated tannery scraps. Credit: Courtesy of the Blacksmith Institute
By contrast, global attention and billions of dollars are focused on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect comparable nu…