Yugendree Naidoo
CAPE TOWN, Sep 23 2008 (IPS) – In the impoverished informal settlement of Du Noon, 20 kilometres north of Cape Town, sick residents rely on a single clinic staffed by six nurses to meet their health needs.
Fifty-eight year old Oliver Lala waited 11 hours to get medication for his asthma. Credit: Brenda Nkuna/WCN
During one week in August, the nursing component of the clinic was reduced by 50 percent due to staff illness and trai…
Mirela Xanthaki
NEW YORK, Nov 14 2008 (IPS) – We each spend, on average, three years of our lives going to the toilet assuming we have one, that is.
Although bodily functions is a topic usually treated as off-limits, the fact that 2.6 billion people are without adequate sanitation facilities is something to be loudly talked about, development activists say.
Just as HIV/AIDS cannot be discussed without talking frankly about sex, so the problem of sanitation cannot be discussed without talking frankly about s**t, one Nepali sanitation activist says.
In her new book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters , the journalist Rose George embarks on a journey across the world to try to break taboos and erase the shame that accomp…
Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Jan 9 2009 (IPS) – Every five minutes she gives a hacking cough. Ndlaleni Ndzinisa (70) says she has continuously suffered from tuberculosis for the past five years. Because she cannot afford to pay for transport to the nearest hospital, she has repeatedly failed to adhere to her tuberculosis (TB) treatment.
Ndzinisa s doctor, Franklin Ackom, says it is highly unusual that she has not been diagnosed with the difficult-to-treat, multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extremely-drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), which are strains that are resistant to treatment by first-line and second-line drugs, including Isoniazid and Rifampicin.
It s against my will, said Ndzinisa, who lives in the small village of Lulakeni, in southern Swaziland. I cannot afford th…
Thalif Deen interviews SONG YOUNG-GON, head of the World Toilet Association
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24 2009 (IPS) – As part of the International Year of Sanitation (IYS), the United Nations launched an aggressive campaign last year to fend off what it called a silent global crisis : the woeful lack of adequate sanitation in the world s poorest countries.
Song Young-Gon Credit:
But the U.N. s best efforts were still not good enough judging by the fact that over 40 percent of the global population 2.6 billion out of nearly 6.0 billion people still live without proper toilet facilities.
The problems continue to linger …
Nergui Manalsuren interviews JAE SO and PETER KOLSKY of the World Bank
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 31 2009 (IPS) – The world s developing nations, particularly in Asia and Africa, are struggling to cope with two of the basic necessities of life: fresh water and adequate sanitation.
Jae So Credit: Simone McCourtie/World Bank
The United Nations says there are still some 1.1 billion people who lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion without basic sanitation.
The World Bank allocates 60 percent of its 10.7-billion-dollar budget for water supply and sanitation for water, and only…
Servaas van den Bosch
WINDHOEK, Apr 30 2009 (IPS) – Within the next twelve months, eight Southern African countries will synchronise their battles against malaria through cross-border collaboration. They hope to eliminate malaria in four of them by 2015.
The Elimination Eight (E8) initiative will establish an early warning mechanism and a rapid response system in the eight Southern African countries. In addition the countries health ministers promise to invest in malaria research and make financial resources available for the project.
A budget for the E8 initiative has not yet been set, but the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) believes it will cost a whopping $200 million a year to control the disease in sub-Saharan Africa.
International cooperati…
HO CHI MINH CITY, May 29 2009 (IPS) – While investors and their opponents argue the pros and cons of an ambitious plan to mine bauxite deposits in Vietnam s Central Highlands region, life for the tea and coffee farmers in nearby towns has already become a lot more complicated.
Hills that used to be plantations of tea have already been bulldozed into a 50-hectare site to locate the bauxite project, the state-controlled ‘Tuoi Tre newspaper reported in April from Lam Dong province in central Vietnam, the location of one of the planned mines.
The same thing has happened to the coffee hills in Dak Nong province, but on a larger scale the construction site may stretch to 200 hectares, ‘Tuoi Tre said of the second proposed mine site.
The government s plan to mine baux…
Miriam Mannak
CAPE TOWN, Aug 3 2009 (IPS) – For the first time in eighty years, a new Tuberculosis (TB) vaccine has entered the efficacy stage of a clinical trial. While the developers are optimistic about the outcome, lung health and TB experts are warning against being overly excited.
The bacteria that causes TB is a tricky one, as people can get the disease more then once which is different when one looks at conditions such as measles, said Anthony Harries, head of the research department of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.
The organisation, with headquarters in Paris aims to bring expertise, solutions and support to address health challenges in low- and middle-income countries.
This makes developing a vaccine that protects p…
Fabio Scarpello
DENPASAR, Indonesia, Aug 24 2009 (IPS) – Women s rights groups who are campaigning for widening the scope of abortion in Indonesia are calling for an amendment to a colonial era law that puts poor women at risk.
Tini Hadad (right): We want the health law to be updated Credit:
Tini Hadad, secretary general of the Association for Women s Health, says Indonesia has one of the world s highest rates of deaths from unsafe abortions. This is because the current laws are totally inadequate, she told IPS.
The Association f…
Bonnie Allen
BAILA, Liberia, Oct 1 2009 (IPS) – As heavy rain hammers the grass thatch roof of her mud hut, Goromah Borbor huddles inside and quietly describes how her daughter Annie died while giving birth.
For women like Queen Smith, it s a long trek from their forest homes in northern Liberia to …