Timothy Spence
SEIBERSDORF, Austria, Dec 17 2010 (IPS) – After successfully suppressing scourges of fruit, tsetse and screwworm flies in the Americas, researchers are exploring whether the same sterilised insect technique can be used to control malaria, which kills some one million people every year, many of them in Africa.
Malaria, the Silent Killer in Africa Credit: John Robinson/IPS
In the 1950s, scientists searching for ways to eradicate invasive insects that attacked fruits, vegetables and farm animals began using bursts of radiation to re…
Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Feb 2 2011 (IPS) – The southern Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo has not been spared the heavy rains that have fallen across Southern Africa; the water is welcome in this semi-arid part of the country, but the coming of the rainy season has provoked fresh memories of the 2008 cholera epidemic.
The city s water and sewage infrastructure is still in poor condition. Though Bulawayo mayor Thaba Moyo insists the frequently brown water from the city s taps is safe to drink, many Bulawayo residents are falling back on their own resources to protect themselves against waterborne diseases.
Sikhulekile Banda, who lives in Tshabalala, a crowded low-income township, uses makeshift sand filters for both the rainwater she harvests and the brown water she gets sp…
Pavol Stracansky
BELGRADE, Mar 13 2011 (IPS) – Russia and the Ukraine have been warned they are lagging behind the rest of the former Soviet bloc in introducing a simple and inexpensive public health measure that has curbed the incidence of mental disabilities among children across the region.
UNICEF says that the two countries, whose populations are the largest in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, a grouping of ex-Soviet states) region, are using spurious arguments rooted in business concerns to resist introducing mandatory laws making all edible salt iodised and helping prevent mental retardation in children.
Anatoly Karpov, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador who has worked extensively in former Soviet Union countries to…
Pavol Stracansky
BEIRUT, Apr 5 2011 (IPS) – A pioneering drug substitution programme in conflict-wracked Afghanistan has been hailed as a resounding success as local doctors and international health organisations battle soaring heroin addiction rates and an HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Doctors on the programme, which gives patients controlled doses of methadone to help them control their heroin addiction, say its results show the benefit harm reduction treatment can have in tackling the spread of blood-borne diseases among injecting drug users and help often ostracised addicts reintegrate into society.
In a setting like Afghanistan, where there are no referrals possible to a social worker or a psychosocial counsellor and where you need to integrate everything in the same progr…
Mitch Moxley
BEIJING, May 6 2011 (IPS) – In China, where a growing demand for organ transplants coupled with a dramatic shortage of donors has fuelled a rampant black market trade, selling your organs for cash is a mouse click away.
An Internet search reveals a website offering kidneys for sale and the contact information of those able to procure them. A young woman, posing for IPS as a migrant worker from Hebei province, calls a man who has advertised on the website, identified as Mr. He.
I need money, she says over the phone. Do you want a woman s kidney?
Mr. He asks her age. Twenty-five, she replies.
Of course we want your kidney.
Mr. He tells the woman to travel to Xuzhou city, Jiangsu province, where somebody will be waiting when her t…
Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Jun 9 2011 (IPS) – As government prepares to roll out the expensive new antiretroviral treatment regime recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this month, there are fears about the programme s sustainability after two recent proposals for funding were rejected by the Global Fund.
The antiretrovirals government seeks to change. Credit: Charles Mpaka
In November 2009, the WHO recommended new antiretroviral treatment (ART) guidelines aimed at reducing HIV-related deaths. The global health body dire…
Portia Crowe
NEW YORK, Jun 20 2011 (IPS) – As the world marks 30 years since HIV/AIDS was first identified, vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez hopes intervention programmes can begin to incorporate treatment for some lesser-known ailments called neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs.
In a co-authored by economist Jeffrey Sachs, Hotez explains that neglected diseases like schistosomiasis and hookworm geographically overlap with HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. He points to the massive global effort to fight the more notorious afflictions, and notes the possibilities for operational synergies in fighting NTDs as well.
This August, Hotez will have the opportunity to advance his ambitions when he serves as the of a new School of Tropical Diseases at the Baylor Colleg…
Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Jul 25 2011 (IPS) – Swaziland s economic crisis has affected its ability to provide healthcare as the country s buffer stock of antiretrovirals (ARVs) has fallen below the prescribed three-month supply.
And people living with HIV/AIDS are extremely concerned about what will happen to their treatment if the country cannot afford to purchase ARVs.
Led by the Swaziland National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (SWANNEPHA), civil society organisations took to the streets on Jul. 21 to demand that government ensure that there are enough ARVs in the country. The ministry of health is not (being) clear if people on antiretroviral treatment (ART) are assured the availability of ARVs, said SWANNEPHA vice-president Vusi Nxumalo as he delivered a p…
Thalif Deen
STOCKHOLM, Aug 26 2011 (IPS) – In the strife-stricken Middle East, oil has always been in the realm of politics. But in the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank, oil has been supplanted by water.
Shaddad Attili, head of the Palestinian Water Authority, told IPS that the Palestinians have not only been deprived of water as a basic human right but that water is also being used as a weapon of war by the Israelis.
Water is a humanitarian issue. It should be taken out of politics, he said, pointing out that everyone in the region, including the Israelis, the Jordanians, the Lebanese and the Palestinians, should all be rightfully entitled to a basic human need.
Expressing strong feelings of anger and frustration, he said the deliberate…
Amanda Wilson*
WASHINGTON, Oct 11 2011 (IPS) – A new report on global hunger pinpoints factors at the heart of spikes in food prices it says are exacerbating the unfolding food crisis in the Horn of Africa.
Released ahead of World Food Day on Oct. 16, the report calls for action to control price volatility in the global food market and protect the world s poorest from the scourge of famine.
The (GHI), released Tuesday by The (IFPRI), , and , points to climate change, growing demand for biofuels, and increasing commodities futures trading in global food markets as the causes of price increases in food, which it says were also at the root of the food crisis of 2007-2008.
Price volatility refers to the relative rate at which the price for a commodity changes ov…