Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 14 2007 (IPS) – Three months after a private Japanese hospital proposed the setting up of a baby hatch to save unwanted infants, conservative officials continue to resist its launch in what critics say illustrates indifference to female reproductive rights in this tradition-bound country.
Dubbed cradle-of-storks , the baby hatch would allow infants to be deposited anonymously. It was proposed by the Jikei Hospital, a Catholic facility that does not perform abortions and is located in Kumamoto city, southern Japan.

Opposition is based mostly on the grounds that a baby hatch might encourage an increase in the number of babies abandoned by parents. But it is also for such reasons as that the facility is called a baby post in the translation …

Lynette Corporal* – IPS/Newsmekong

BANGKOK, Apr 15 2007 (IPS) – Grade 7 student Sakulrathna Muadkum says she knows what avian influenza is. I saw posters of it and I will simply not eat chicken that died of the flu, the pupil at Watnuannoradit School, here in Thai capital, said nonchalantly.
Over in Ranong in southern Thailand, a shy Htet Htet said in his native Burmese: My teacher told us to wash our hands often so we don t get sick. I will also not eat chicken if I think it died of bird flu.

The 12-year-old student of Victoria Learning Centre in Ranong, a southern Thai province on the border with Burma, added that he has seen colourful posters about bird flu in his community.

Efforts like these to reach young people and inform them about how to prevent the …

Ignatius Banda

BULAWAYO, May 24 2007 (IPS) – Judith Moyo is unable to give her child enough food. She has to bring her 18-month-old daughter to a council clinic for check-ups every month because of what nurses call her slow development .
I give her isitshwala leftovers from the previous night, 33-year-old Moyo says as she tries to keep the child quiet. Isitshwala is a staple thick porridge prepared from maize meal.

The fourth of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seeks a two-third reduction in the deaths of children under five by 2015. But the issues related to the first MDG, the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, will push the reduction of child mortality in Zimbabwe beyond the target date of 2015.

Despite President Robert Mugabe …

Adrianne Appel

BOSTON, Jul 25 2007 (IPS) – A U.S. health agency has made research subjects of people in tiny Mossville, Louisiana by repeatedly monitoring dangerously high levels of dioxin in their blood while doing nothing to get the community out of harm s way, residents say.

Cemetery in Mossville, Louisiana, with Condea Vista polyvinyl plant in background. Credit: Greenpeace/Stone

Further, the agency failed to release important test results for five ye…

Suvendrini Kakuchi* – IPS/TerraViva

COLOMBO, Aug 23 2007 (IPS) – For Padma, a sociology graduate from a Sri Lankan university, the three-day International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) that ended Thursday was nothing short of an enlightening experience in her life.

Next ICAAP Set For Bali Credit:

When I arrived at the conference, I was filled with fear and prejudice against people with HIV and AIDS. But now, I hold a totally different view. Thanks to the large amount of information available to me here, I no longer fear eating with or using toilets that have already been visited by positive pe…

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Nov 19 2007 (IPS) – Miguel Fernández was a police officer in the Mexican capital who used and sold cocaine and crack for 18 years in collusion with his superiors and colleagues. Now he runs a small rehabilitation centre for addicts, where the Bible and God s healing power are the treatment of choice.
God bless you, is Fernández s standard greeting. I was more of a drug dealer than a cop, and I was on the point of committing suicide because of my addiction. But God rescued me from hell, so I decided to help others, he told IPS.

The 43-year-old former police officer and drug trafficker is a combination of rehabilitation counsellor and Christian evangelist. Since 2002 he has treated 408 addicts, and says that half of them succeeded in kicki…

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 1 2008 (IPS) – Sri Lankan doctors and patients rights groups have rarely seen eye-to-eye on the global debate over costly branded drugs against cheap generics, but they are coming together against a new rule that requires doctors to use only generic names on their prescriptions or face jail.
The Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC), in a strong reaction to threats from Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva to jail doctors who do not stick to generic names, to the exclusion of brands, said in a statement: There are many crimes that may need imprisonment but this does not warrant such punishment. It is very unlikely that a minister of health in a civilised country would castigate doctors in this manner. #39 #39

According to the SLMC governing bo…

Kwamboka Oyaro

NAIROBI, Apr 10 2008 (IPS) – For many of Africa s women, getting access to family planning services is difficult at the best of times. When war intervenes they can find themselves without any services at all, even as they become more vulnerable to sexual violence the situation in northern Uganda being a case in point.
A long-running conflict in this region has pitted the Lord s Resistance Army (LRA) against government forces. The rebels, led by Joseph Kony, claim to be fighting for a government based on the Biblical Ten Commandments, but have become notorious for rights abuses that include the use of children as soldiers, sex slaves and porters.

While an initial ceasefire in the 20-year war was reached in 2006, a final peace agreement remains elusive. K…

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, May 21 2008 (IPS) – Nearly 50 years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, sexual minorities are at last beginning to feel that their voice is being heard and that they can finally take their place in the movement towards a more just and inclusive society.
I always wanted to be a part of all this. I can t remember how many times I told my mother: I m going to make it work; I m going to make the revolution, Mónica, a young Cuban woman who held a symbolic wedding with her partner Elizabeth in December, in the inner courtyard of the governmental National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), told IPS.

Meanwhile, Danilo Rivero, who travelled 100 kilometres to attend the celebration in Havana of the International Day against Homophobia and Transpho…

Kathryn Strachan

JOHANNESBURG, Jun 18 2008 (IPS) – The wind has picked up and blows the sand, swirling in patterns, across the dirt roads and barren yards of Madadeni township. It batters relentlessly against the walls of Joseph Gumede s* iron shack, rattling the windows, and he has to raise his voice to be heard above the din. But sheltered from the dust storm. Joseph feels that he has at last found his way home.
Joseph was one of the first patients to be sent home under South Africa s fledgling programme to move long-term psychiatric patients out of hospital and into the community. Madadeni Hospital, which lies in the bleak flat expanse outside the industrial town of Newcastle in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, was chosen as one of two pilot sites to test the policy of deins…