Correspondents* – IPS/Haiti Grassroots Watch
A young boy on one of his daily trips to fetch water. Credit: James Alexis/Haiti Grassroots Watch
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 25 2011 (IPS) – Despite, or perhaps because of, a host of international actors, 2.5 million U.S. dollars in funding and five years of empty promises, residents of some of Port-au-Prince s poorest neighbourhoods have yet to see running water in their vicinity.
COLOMBO, Jan 25 2012 (IPS) – Experts agree that Sri Lanka s free pre and postnatal clinics across the island nation have helped bring infant mortality down to 15 per 1,000 live births and the under-five mortality rate to 21 per 1,000 live births.
Children living in Sri Lanka s tea estates are among the country s most malnourished. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS
But, beneath that general picture of success lie pockets of vulnerability where poverty…
KUANTAN, Malyasia, Mar 5 2012 (IPS) – Malaysians protesting against an Australian-owned rare earth refinery, that will generate radioactive waste, are determined to agitate until the project is abandoned.
“It is time to shut down the Lynas plant,” said Wong Tack chairman of the Himpunan Hijau (Green Gathering Malay) or HHC that is leading a mass movement against the controversial refinery.
On Feb. 26, the HHC organised its biggest ever mass protest in this coastal town, capital of Pahang state, attracting 15,000 ordinary Malaysians as well as prominent public figures, including Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the opposition Pakatan Rayat coalition.
Wong Tack told IPS that if the government “continues to dither” the HHC would organise an even bigger prote…
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 16 2012 (IPS) – Water privatisation has been proven not to help the poor, yet a quarter of all World Bank funding goes directly to corporations and the private sector, bypassing both governments and its own standards and transparency requirements in order to do so, says a new report released Monday.
People in many developing countries often lack access to clean water, but the approach to remedy this problem has shifted in recent years to rely more on the private sector. Yet, as this new report and several other watchdog groups have shown, the change has been more harmful than helpful.
, the U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that published the report, has called on the World Bank to stop funding the private water sector and start redirecting its mo…
Aline Jenckel interviews JOVANA RIOS CISNERO, a member of the Asociación Panameña para el Planeamiento de la Familia (Panamanian Family Planning Association)
UNITED NATIONS, May 18 2012 (IPS) – In Latin American countries and in the Caribbean, where income disparities are among the greatest in the world, too many people often lack access to comprehensive health services and information needed to live healthy lives.
Jovana Ríos Cisnero promotes sexual and reproductive health and rights …
A number of people line up at the Kanungu Health Center IV, Uganda to access family planning facilities. Courtesy: Tadej Znidarcic/UNFPA
Kanungu, UGANDA , Jun 29 2012 (IPS) – It is midmorning at the Kanungu Health Centre IV and the queue of patients grows as more people start to arrive for treatment at this rural facility more than 400 kilometres outside the Ugandan capital of Kampala.
Most are here to access family planning services, while some are waiting for cancer screening.
Generally about 100 patients a day visit the health centre. But today there will be four times as many.
“We see an average of 400 people a day when the doctor from …
Marianela Jarroud interviews KATHY GERWIG and VERÓNICA ODRIOZOLA of Health Care Without Harm
Kathy Gerwig and Verónica Odriozola, with Health Care Without Harm. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS
SANTIAGO, Aug 15 2012 (IPS) – Medical care is associated with images of cleanliness and good health. Today’s hospitals, however, are major sources of pollution and consume large amounts of valuable resources, like energy.
Often this pollution leads to illnesses which must be treated by the same hospitals that contributed to causing them, the co-director of Health Care Without Harm in the United States, Kathy Gerwig, told Tierramérica*.
The problem is that environmental …
Women’s sexual and reproductive rights are at the heart of sustainable development, experts say. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2012 (IPS) – Gathered at the Ford Foundation in New York Monday, international luminaries, family planning experts and women s rights activists repeatedly expressed a common sentiment: “I cannot believe that we are still having this discussion today.
They were there to mark the launch of a new 26-member to galvanise support behind the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
That conference took place nearly two decades ago, in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. It resulted in a Programme of A…
WASHINGTON, Nov 9 2012 (IPS) – Researchers unveiling critical trial results of a potentially major anti-malaria vaccine are expressing disappointment that the drug’s efficacy levels have proved lower than they had anticipated.
The malaria plasmodium. Credit: Image by Ute Frevert; false color by Margaret Shear/cc by 2.5
Following on decades of research, the third phase of testing on a vaccine known as RTS,S found that the drug reduced malaria rates among infants (age six to 12 weeks) by about a third, far lower than expected.
The study, funded largely by the B…
Demanding rights for nuclear workers. Credit: National Union of General Workers.
TOKYO, Mar 11 2013 (IPS) – Japan has promised to scrap the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors that faced the world’s worst nuclear accident. But Hiroyuki Watanabe, councillor in Iwaki City located 30 kilometres from the accident site, greets such intentions on the second anniversary of the disaster on Monday with misgiving.
“I see problems in Fukushima increasing, not decreasing. One of the biggest issues facing the country is the lack of qualified workers in Japan who can meet the enormous challenges ahead,” he told IPS.
Iwaki City lies in Fukushima prefecture, and was affecte…