Tonderai Kwidini

HARARE, Sep 30 2007 (IPS) – A young Zimbabwean couple glances furtively around before settling on a bench in a bare patch of ground that used to be a recreational park in Glen View, a sprawling, high-density suburb of the capital, Harare. It s a Monday morning, and the two of them are struggling to come to terms with a strange sickness that has gripped their family. Every move they make in the direction of the Glen View One Satellite Clinic shows they are in great pain.
We are going to the clinic to seek medical attention. We have been twisting and turning all night and we don t know what has hit us, but I suspect it s the untreated water that we are drinking, Charles Nemukundu tells IPS as he leads his partner to the clinic, where waterborne diseases are be…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2007 (IPS) – In this 21st century, when medical science and gender empowerment are rising progressively, no woman should die giving life , declares Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).
It is unacceptable that one woman dies every minute during pregnancy and childbirth when proven interventions exist, she adds. Millions of lives are at stake, and we must act now.

Obaid will be one of the keynote speakers at a major international conference in London that will call for increased investments for health care for women, mothers and newborns.

The three-day conference, scheduled to take place Oct.18-20, is expected to have more than 1,500 participants, including health care professionals, hi…

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Nov 22 2007 (IPS) – Conventional measures of economic success do not take sufficient account of the social and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century, according to senior European Union economists.
Speaking at a high-level conference here Monday titled Beyond GDP, Emeka Anyaoku, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature s (WWF) president and former foreign minister of Nigeria said, Economies are a means, not an end.

Governments and industry of today, never mind tomorrow, need to know how our ecological and social assets are performing, just as much as our economic ones, he stressed.

Since the 1930s, the main economic indicator used internationally to assess wealth is gross domestic product (GDP). It calculates the total final ma…

Nergui Manalsuren

NEW YORK, Jan 3 2008 (IPS) – When New York City banned cigarette smoking in bars and restaurants several years ago, the sardonic television host Jon Stewart pointed out that forcing smokers into the streets outside would also help mask the city s ubiquitous urine smell.
With 2008 designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Sanitation , public toilet activists are stepping up their demands for expanded facilities in one of the richest metropolises on Earth.

According to the American Restroom Association, Singapore, with a population of 4.5 people, has 29,500 public toilets, while New York City, with some 8.2 million residents, has a relatively scant 1,178 public toilets.

Currently, the city s only public restrooms are located…

Maricel Drazer

BERLIN, Feb 6 2008 (IPS) – Living as a couple is the best dream come true, Volker Lauer told IPS, referring to his five-year relationship with Monika, who he met through a unique German dating agency for the disabled.

Monika and Volker Credit: Schatzkiste, Hamburg

When he emerged from a coma after a traffic accident several decades ago, Lauer, 51, was permanently brain-damaged, while Monika, 48, has been mentally handicapped since birth.

The dating service, Schatzkiste Partnervermittlung, is a world pioneer. It was founded i…

Catherine Makino

TOKYO, Mar 6 2008 (IPS) – A complaint of medical abuse, filed against a prison doctor by 22 inmates of a high security jail, has revived the wider issue of penitentiary reforms in a country that lays emphasis on rigorous discipline for repeat offenders.
Following a formal criminal complaint, filed against the chief medical officer and a male nurse on Feb 19, the entire medical establishment of the high security prison in the Tokushima prefecture has been brought under close scrutiny.

The complainants have, through their lawyers, filed a request for redress with the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, claiming to have suffered torture and physical abuse at the hands of the chief medical doctor, Hirota Matsuoka.

In November, frustration over i…

Keya Acharya

NEW DELHI, Apr 17 2008 (IPS) – Over 37.7 million people in India are affected by water-borne diseases due to contaminated drinking water supply and an estimated 1.5 million children die of diarrhoea each year, according to newly available statistics.
Compiled through collaboration between the government and the international non-government organisation (NGO) Water Aid the new figures belie official claims that 94 percent of rural 94 percent of rural and 91 percent of urban populations now have access to safe drinking water.

According to Water Aid the difference is that until now there has been no mention in official statistics of the quality of water supplied to these populations, or of its sustained year-round supply.

Lizette Burgers, chief of Wa…

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.

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