Helen Clark

HANOI, Nov 11 2009 (IPS) – Vietnam will be one of five nations most affected by climate change. Worst-case scenarios see large parts of the low-lying and flood-prone Mekong Delta area, which produces much of the nation s rice crop, flooded.
A one-metre rise in sea level, predicted by 2100 will affect 10 percent of Vietnam s population (which now stands at 86 million) and 10 percent of GDP lost.

The government could not have been more right when it released these scenarios in August. Many international organisations concur.

As millions are displaced and the potential for vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue to spread grows, health and human rights have become concerns closely related to climate change.

The links between health, h…

Vusumuzi Sifile

HARARE, Dec 2 2009 (IPS) – Martha* knows that her two young sisters and her need medicine. She also knows where to get it a clinic a few yards away from her home in Glen Norah, a high-density suburb in the Zimbabwean capital.
But she cannot get the life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). At 15, the law prevents her from doing so. She can only access the drugs in the company of an adult.

When my mother died in 2007, my aunt used to collect the drugs for us. She has since relocated to South Africa, and our other relatives say they are too embarrassed to be seen collecting the drugs, people will think they are now sick, said Martha.

Martha is among the estimated 158,798 children who are infected with HIV in Zimbabwe.

On November 24,…

Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 2010 (IPS) – The enormous relief effort being mounted in Haiti since a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled most of Port-au-Prince is facing a host of difficulties, including bottlenecks at the main airport and lack of heavy equipment to clear debris from streets and roads, aid officials say.

Port-au-Prince reside…

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…