Stephanie Nieuwoudt
CAPE TOWN, May 30 2008 (IPS) – When four-year-old Alice Were suddenly developed a fever, her mother Miriam took her to the local medicine woman close to her house in Kangemi, a poor, cramped settlement on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Two days later, Alice was unconscious. Her frantic mother rushed to hospital with the child in her arms. But it was too late. Alice died of malaria.
Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 29 2008 (IPS) – The HIV/AIDS epidemic remains stable in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly affecting high-risk groups like gay men and sex workers, according to the UNAIDS report for 2008, released Tuesday.
Last year, 140,000 new infections were reported in the region, bringing the total number of people living with HIV to 1.7 million, while 63,000 people died of AIDS-related causes in 2007.
César Núñez, UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) director for Latin America, said at the presentation of the report that this is not a small, controlled epidemic, and recommended heavy emphasis on prevention measures.
The U.N. agency s 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic identifies Brazil and Mexico (Latin America s…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 12 2008 (IPS) – Children under five years across Asia and the Pacific are being left behind in the race to reduce poverty even as the region boasts impressive strides in meeting major United Nations development goals.
The region s economic gains, led by powerhouse China, will enable it to reach the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reducing poverty by 2015, states a new report released by the Asian Development Bank and two U.N bodies, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Its greatest success has been with poverty, for which the region as a whole is on track to meet the 2015 targets of halving the proportion of people living in ex…
Michael J. Carter
SEATTLE, Washington, Nov 4 2008 (IPS) – The length of time convicted murderers wait for their execution is steadily rising in the U.S., raising concerns that more will suffer from the mental illness known as death row syndrome .
The United States 3,300 death row inmates can now expect to wait an average of 12 years from the day of their sentencing to death by lethal injection or electric chair, a doubling of the time gap in the mid-1980s, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice.
This increase is mainly due to mandatory appeals introduced after capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976 after a four-year suspension. These reforms have led to lengthier appeals, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Centre.
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Marcela Valente*
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 29 2008 (IPS) – AIDS prevention campaigns tend to target the young, who make up a large percentage of those infected with the disease. But experts in Latin America say that people in older age ranges with an increasingly active sex life are being neglected, and are at risk because of lack of information.
Sexuality in older people is discounted, so no research is being done on the risk of sexually transmitted diseases spreading among the elderly, Liliana Gastrón, an expert on gender and ageing and head of the doctoral programme in social and human sciences at the University of Luján in the Argentine province of Buenos Aires, told IPS.
The 2008 report on the global AIDS epidemic by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS …
Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Mar 24 2009 (IPS) – Dengue fever has claimed 24 lives so far this year in Bolivia, in what experts are calling the worst epidemic in the country s history. The mosquito-borne disease has spread fast due to high summer temperatures combined with rainfall, a weak public health system and poor collection of garbage.
The epidemic has hit the eastern city of Santa Cruz and other lowlands areas that have a hot humid climate. The national head of epidemiology, Eddy Martinez, said more than 45,000 cases have been reported since January, and added that the epidemic is expected to reach its peak in April, with as many as 60,000 cases.
Health Minister Ramiro Tapia said the government prevention campaign includes spraying against mosquitoes in towns and citi…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 25 2009 (IPS) – Taiwan is emerging as a beacon of hope for countries across Asia grappling to stop the spread of the AIDS epidemic among injecting drug users (IDUs), a major risk group.
The Asian island came in for praise at an international conference here for a successful public health initiative that saw an over 50 percent plunge in the number of new HIV cases among IDUs over a three year period.
In 2005, Taiwan recorded its highest number of new reported cases of people infected with the killer virus over 3,300 nearly twice the number recorded the previous year. But, by the end of 2008, the new HIV cases had dropped to 1,752 cases.
The secret to the country s success was a humane approach to help IDUs through a nation-wide…
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, May 22 2009 (IPS) – In the last 13 months, 12 of Mexico s 32 states have approved amendments to their state constitutions defining a fertilised human egg as a person with a right to legal protection, and seven other state parliaments are taking steps in the same direction.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say it is a massive conservative reaction to a law decriminalising abortion up to 12 weeks gestation that went into force in the Mexican capital in April 2007.
The law was upheld in August 2008 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that it did not violate the Mexican constitution.
Behind the wave of reforms of state constitutions, according to critics, is a pact between the hierarchy of the Mexican Catholic Church and the leadersh…
Danielle Kurtzleben
WASHINGTON, Jun 16 2009 (IPS) – On Jun. 19, 2008, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1820, expressly addressing the problems of sexual violence in conflict situations. One year later, three experts in the field gathered to speak at the United States Institute of Peace to evaluate the implementation of 1820 and consider how it might better prevent this widespread crime.
The resolution marked a major step forward for the U.N. in addressing the problems of sexual violence in conflict zones. Anne-Marie Goetz, a chief advisor at the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), presents it as a groundbreaking resolution, linking sexual violence to broader peace and security concerns.
For the very first time, the U.N. Security Council recognises th…
Servaas van den Bosch
WINDHOEK, Jul 28 2009 (IPS) – While paediatric HIV remains a growing concern throughout Southern Africa, Namibian doctors have managed to put high numbers of babies on the life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment with the help of an early infant diagnosis (EID) programme based on dry blood sampling.
Since the launch of the EID programme in 2006, the number of HIV-infected newborns has dropped from 13 percent to two percent in Namibia, according to the national Ministry of Health.
These figures stand in sharp contrast with data from other African countries where many pregnant women are not diagnosed in time to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of the virus and only a few HIV-positive infants receive ARVs.
A 2009 study by the C…