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…
Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
HAIFA, Northern Israel, Dec 16 2010 (IPS) – At the Rambam medical centre here in Israel s third largest city just 30 odd kilometres from Lebanon, they are working around the clock, racing against time.
Israel is building the largest underground emergency hospital in the world. The 100 million dollar project is slated for completion in May 2012.
It is part of a national effort aimed at protecting hospitals against what officials hope medical emergency facilities will not ever have to endure a conventional, chemical, or biological missile attack.
Ariye Berkovitz, head of the Rambam engineering department, supervises the unusual project: There s no such structure anywhere in the whole world. In regular times, this will serve …
Laura Lopez Gonzalez
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 2 2011 (IPS) – Delays in drug registration by the country s Medicines Control Council (MCC), contribute to depriving South African HIV patients of important fixed dose combination antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. But there are indications that the effects of the delays are being felt even farther afield.
In December 2010, South Africa announced a new, two-year tender for ARVs which halved drug costs for the national HIV treatment programme; The tender however failed to include many fixed dose ARV combinations, which although approved by bodies like the World Health Organization are not yet registered by the MCC for use in South Africa.
By combining multiple drugs into one, fixed dose combinations reduce the number of pills HIV patient…
Rousbeh Legatis interviews REINOU GROEN of Surgeons OverSeas
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 2011 (IPS) – Surgery saves the lives of millions of people around the world, but only a tiny percentage of them live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where a shortage of skills, supplies and infrastructure can turn easily treatable accidents and illnesses into lifelong disabilities and even death.
Reinou Groen Credit: Courtesy of Surgeons OverSeas
The world s poorest receive only four percent of all major surgical operations worldwide, while 75 percent of surgeries …
Emilio Godoy*
MEXICO CITY, Apr 4 2011 (IPS) – Rather belatedly, Latin America is beginning to test products imported from Japan to check that they are not contaminated with radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear power station that was severely damaged by the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Authorities in Mexico and Brazil have begun to monitor foods and health supplies from the Asian country for radiation.
Japan is not a major food exporter, but monitoring is necessary because of the problem of exposure to radiation, Alejandro Calvillo, head of the Mexican organisation El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power), told IPS.
The National Commission for Nuclear Safety and Safeguards (CNSNS) and the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks (COFEPRIS)…