Beatrice Paez

MONTREAL, Canada, Aug 25 2010 (IPS) – A mother accused of backing insurgents in the Philippines and her newborn son are awaiting their release from prison, in a case that has gained international attention.
Amaryllis Enriquez, the head of Karapatan, an alliance of individuals and organisations that investigate human rights cases, told IPS a new motion was filed Monday by the lawyers of Judilyn Oliveros, who gave birth in July and was brought back to prison last week after the court denied an appeal to extend her temporary release for six months to nurse her baby.

Oliveros is among a group of 43 people two doctors, one registered nurse, two midwives and 38 volunteer health workers who were arrested on Feb. 6 for the illegal possession of explosives and fi…

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Sep 16 2010 (IPS) – An inescapable fact of living in societies that are as small and highly personalised as those in the Caribbean is that information travels very quickly and not always very accurately.
The result usually is that privacy is, more often than not, a luxury and once a stigma of whatever kind attaches to you, there is little scope available for leaving one area of the society and migrating to another to, as it were, make a fresh start, Barbados acting Prime Minister Freundel Stuart told delegates attending a two-day symposium on HIV/AIDS and human rights in the Caribbean this week.

As regional leaders get ready to attend the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in New York next week, health of…

Matthew O. Berger

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 2010 (IPS) – When the Green Revolution took root in the 1960s and 1970s, plant biologists main concern was increasing the yield of the staple crops on which people in poor countries depended. This, it stood to reason, would increase the amount of food available to the world s poor and decrease hunger.
It generally succeeded. But what if those staple crops were themselves lacking in the micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron or zinc that people were short on but which are necessary for healthy bodies?

Addressing this micronutrient deficiency would require a new approach and a new effort which is only now beginning to, quite literally, bear fruit.

In sub-Saharan Africa, many people, especially in rural areas, depend on staples…

Cléo Fatoorehchi interviews JENNIFER REDNER of the International Women’s Health Coalition

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 2010 (IPS) – At the start of this month, the U.S. Senate unanimously adopted the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act . Women s rights groups are now urging the Congress s lower chamber to pass it before adjourning at the end of the year.

Jennifer Redner Credit: Courtesy of IWHC

Jennifer Redner, a consultant to the International Women s Health Coalition on U.S. foreign policy issues related to the health and rights of women and girls, explai…

Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Jan 31 2011 (IPS) – Leonor, a Mexican citizen, took part in a 2006 clinical trial of a drug to treat kidney disease, designed by a transnational pharmaceutical company.
A friend of mine who is a nurse told me about the trial and I decided to take part, Leonor, a 30-year-old saleswoman who has kidney problems, told IPS. I was given regular doses of the medicine for several weeks, and they said it worked.

Her story is just one among many as clinical trials are increasingly taking place in countries like Mexico and Brazil, for reasons that range from cheaper costs to less rigorous oversight.

Labs need patients in a given short time, U.S. expert Lorna Speid, author of the book Clinical Trials: What Patients and Healthy Volunteers Need …

FREETOWN, Apr 3 2011 (IPS) – On Apr. 5, the United Nations Children s Fund will launch a report on teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone. Teenage pregnancies account for 40 percent of maternal deaths in the country, and the report comes as public health authorities recalibrate strategy to address a problem that endangers both mothers and children.

This young woman from Makeni dropped out of school when she had her first child at 16. Credit: Anna Jeffreys/IRI…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 3 2011 (IPS) – The United Nations is predicting that come Oct. 31, the world population will hit the seven billion mark and keep expanding till it reaches 9.3 billion by the year 2050.
Much of this increase, according to the Population Division of the U.N. s (DESA), is projected to come from 58 high-fertility countries: 39 in Africa, nine in Asia, six in Oceania and four in Latin America.

These countries include some of the poorest of the world s poor: Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mali, Ethiopia, and East Timor, along with middle income countries such as Jordan, Pakistan, Honduras, Guatemala and the Philippines.

The projections were part of the released Tuesday by DESA.

A world of seven billion …

DAKAR, Jun 7 2011 – Think hand washing can t be fun? Think again. In Senegal, a unique water system offers people an easy, cheap and environmentally friendly way to wash their hands frequently, reducing the spread of hand-borne transmittable diseases.

Students learning how to use the canacla: 30 seconds of hand washing while singing and dancing. Credit: Benoit Vanhercke

It is recess at Clair Soleil elementary school in Dakar. …

Aimable Twahirwa

KIGALI, Jul 22 2011 (IPS) – When Callixte Munyabikari, a potato farmer from Gakenke in northern Rwanda, was rushed to a regional hospital after he fell ill with diarrhoea, he thought it was just a bad case of food poisoning.

A contaminated stream in Kimicanga, a suburb in Kigali. A majority of people in rural Rwanda still consume pol…

Thalif Deen

STOCKHOLM, Aug 25 2011 (IPS) – The statistics coming out of Africa are staggering: 40 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people live in urban areas and 60 percent live in slums, where water supplies and sanitation are severely inadequate , according to the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
The worst affected are countries in sub-Saharan Africa where shortage of financial resources, bureaucratic mismanagement and lack of political leadership are hampering progress towards resolving longstanding problems relating to water scarcities and lack of sanitation facilities.

The London-based WaterAid points out that at least five African countries Angola, Comoros, Zimbabwe, Liberia and Togo have no specific public sector budget-line for sanitation. Comor…