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…
Miriam Mannak
CAPE TOWN, Aug 27 2008 (IPS) – Geographic Information Systems (GIS) could play a vital role in improving agriculture and boosting food security in Africa. However, only a few African countries are capable of developing such systems, partly because of a lack of basic geographical data.
This arose during the third Map Africa conference, which took place in the South African city of Cape Town from August 25 to 26.
The conference revolved around geographical information technology systems, which are computer applications that capture, store, analyse, manage, present, monitor and visualise spatial information that is linked to a geographical location.
A GIS is therefore often associated with an interactive map, which combines tabular data, such as fig…
Wolfgang Kerler
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 2008 (IPS) – Although a safe and effective vaccine has been available for eight years now, 1.6 million people still die from pneumococcal diseases every year, making it the number one vaccine-preventable cause of death worldwide. More than half of the victims are children.
Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 2008 (IPS) – With talks between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his opposition yielding few resolutions to the political deadlock, some observers are calling for outside-the-box thinking beyond the parametres laid out in negotiations.
A power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe is unlikely and bound to fail, said a new report released this week on the Southern African nation s continuing political uncertainty and growing humanitarian crisis.
The report from the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organisation dedicated to preventing and resolving deadly conflicts, called for an abandonment of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by the opposing parties on Sep. 11, which has not yet restored political order.
No new power-shari…
Daniela Estrada* – Tierramérica
SANTIAGO, Mar 20 2009 (IPS) – Olivia González has been a schoolteacher for 30 years in Cerro Navia, one of the districts in the Chilean capital with the highest concentration of air pollution between April and August. A first-hand witness to its effects on health, she is pessimistic about the air she ll breathe this coming southern hemisphere winter.
The dangerous haze that envelopes Santiago. Credit: Photo Stock
Every year, the students in the municipal school where I work come down with …