Miriam Mannak
CAPE TOWN, Oct 5 2009 (IPS) – Maternal mortality rates in Africa constitute a monumental tragedy that requires urgent attention by African governments, health experts say.
More than 250,000 women die in childbirth in Afric…
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 …
Aged women sitting in front of an old age home in Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS
NEW/DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Nov 9 2012 (IPS) – At midnight on Oct. 12, 91-year-old George Puthenveettil, a widower living in Kalanjur village in the Pathanamthita district of the southern Indian state of Kerala, was brutally tortured and ousted from his own house by his only son for “not earning any money”.
The nonagenarian wandered the streets of his village for hours before he reached a shelter in Pathanapuram with the help of neighbours. Police said the son had often beaten and harassed the old man, who was financially dependent on his s…
Styrofoam containers in one of the many drainage canals in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. Most dump into the Caribbean Sea after passing through poor neighbourhoods, like this one in Cité Soleil, where the human and animal fecal matter, styrofoam, and other trash regularly flood the zone after heavy rains. Credit: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 16 2013 – Despite two government decrees making their import and usage illegal, styrofoam cups and plates are used and littered all over the capital, as well as bought and sold, wholesale and retail, completely out in the open.
The first decree, dated Aug. 9, 2012, went into effect on Oct. 1, 2012, …
Dr Ken Jetton (left) and Dr Arturo Cunanan (centre) with a patient who has been cured of leprosy in the Majuro leprosy clinic in the capital of the Marshall Islands. The patient is now seeking further help due to post-treatment complexities. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
MAJURO, Apr 4 2019 (IPS) – It’s a Friday morning and Dr. Ken Jetton, the only doctor who treats leprosy in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, is seeing a patient recently cured of the disease.
David, 32, has received multidrug therapy (MDT) treatment for a year already. But he is back in the doctor’s office because of a reversal reaction that has occurred.
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Parliamentarians from Africa and Asia met to discuss how to improve the conditions of women, girls, and youth during pandemics. Credit: APDA
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Mar 11 2021 (IPS) – COVID-19 restrictions exposed women and girls to heightened abuse – revealing the conditions in which gender-based violence became the shadow pandemic on the continent, a recent webinar attended by parliamentarians from Africa and Asia heard.
Gift Malunga, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) country repres…