Fatoumata Yire Soro’s two-year-old daughter received treatment for malnourishment over the last two months. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

KORHOGO, Cote d’Ivoire, Aug 14 2012 (IPS) – Salimata Coulibaly, director of a medical centre in the town of Korhogo in the northern Cote d’Ivoire region of Savanes, stood before a chart displaying before-and-after photos of local children – one taken when each child arrived at the centre, and one after he or she responded to treatment for malnutrition.

In recent weeks she has had no shortage of photos to take. The number of children brought to the centre for weighing is on the rise, having ballooned fro…

TOKYO, Oct 1 2012 (IPS) – According to popular belief, the world’s rapidly ageing societies face the risk of poverty, dementia and loneliness. But not necessarily so, says a United Nations publication unveiled in Japan Monday. Better management by governments can support a better life for the elderly, and lead them to becoming important contributors to society, it says.

The report ‘’ published by the United Nations Population Fund with HelpAge International, a leading non-governmental organisation, points out that ageing can be a cause for celebration if the elderly enjoy economic and social security.

“Longevity is a triumph of development,” Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund told IPS. The elderly can make a social…

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…

NEW YORK, Mar 8 2013 (IPS) – Peter “Pete” Seeger is a 93-year old U.S. folk legend who resides near Wappingers Falls in southern New York. He can be spotted occasionally on the traffic-heavy Route 9, flanked by world peace signs and armed with a banjo.

Activists behind a New York Police Department vehicle at an anti-frac…

The Agency Headquarters Hospital (AHH) in Bajaur Agency, shortly after a Taliban suicide bomb attack. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

PESHAWAR, May 1 2013 (IPS) – Akbar Shah was sitting with his sick wife in the gynaecology ward of the Agency Headquarters Hospital in Bajaur Agency, a division of northern Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), when a bomb ripped through the facility, scattering patients, doctors and medical supplies.

“We immediately rushed my wife to Peshawar (capital of the neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) because the doctors, paramedics and nurses were panicked and unable to look after patients,” Shah told IPS.

Hours lat…

UNICEF estimates that 3.5 million children in Pakistan suffer from acute malnutrition. The EU is helping the government to cut down the malnourishment rate by 25 percent by the year 2015. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

WASHINGTON, May 29 2013 (IPS) – In addition to the serious health problems it causes, child malnutrition is costing the global economy tens of billions of dollars a year by depriving its victims of the ability to learn basic skills, according to a released Tuesday by Save the Children (STC).

Based on a multi-year study in four countries, the 23-page report found that chronically malnourished children – about one of every four children born today a…

Lucy Westcott interviews Ethiopian women’s rights advocate BOGALETCH GEBRE

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2013 (IPS) – Bogaletch Gebre knows exactly what women in her Ethiopian community are going through. Along with her sisters, the women s rights activist was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) when she was a child in a part of Ethiopia where the practise was carried out on every girl.

In 1997, Gebre and her sister, Fikrete, founded (KMG), which means women working and standing together . For her work with KMG, Gebre won this year s .

Bogaletch Gebre, a wome…

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, …

A woman registering to vote at a school in the border town of Abyei on Oct. 20. She was one of more than 100 people living in the town who showed up to register on the first day as people voted whether to join Sudan or South Sudan. Credit: Andrew Green/IPS

ABEYI, Oct 30 2013 (IPS) – When Chris Bak returned two weeks ago to the disputed border town of Abyei, which voted this week on whether to join Sudan or South Sudan, he barely recognised it as the place where he grew up. “Everything is dirty,” he told IPS. “We were just going around and around, but we didn’t [recognise] this place.”

The town lies in the centre of the , a 10,000 square kilometre area that…

Eighteen-year-old Maureen Phiri from Malawi knows first-hand about the loneliness of HIV. At age 12, she discovered her HIV status but did not tell her mother. Courtesy: Martina Schwikowski

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 6 2013 (IPS) – Maureen Phiri, 18, has a soft voice and a strong message about HIV and young people in her country. “In Malawi, people are still in denial because of cultural beliefs. Traditional leaders and churches are denying the disease. Let us gather those leaders and hear from young people what is really happening.”

Phiri, an activist who lives with HIV, belongs to the Baylor Teen Club in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. The club is part of a programme that pr…