Mary Itumbi

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 22 2010 (IPS) – Pumwani Maternity Hospital, in the impoverished Nairobi neighbourhood of Eastlands, is the site of a trial project using mobile phones to help HIV-positive mothers avoid passing the virus on to their children.

Kenyan women with their babies Credit: Eric Kanalstein/UN

Juliet Wangari Njuguna is a research nurse with Kenya AIDS Control Project. She works at the Pumwani clinic to assist HIV-positive mothers.

We help with the enrolment, and as the patients are coming in they are sifted. We talk to the ones who happen to be HIV positive, and we find out how long they have known their status and if they have disclosed it to anyone. They also find out if the women have a mobile phone.

In July, …

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 2011 (IPS) – The United Nations is intensifying its global campaign to eliminate one of the most widely-condemned religious and cultural rituals in the world today, mostly in Africa and Asia: female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).
The joint efforts by two U.N. agencies the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and the U.N. children s agency UNICEF have resulted in over 6,000 communities abandoning the physically-harmful practice in countries such as Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Guinea and Somalia.

Asked if FGM/C is prevalent mostly in Africa or in Asia, and whether it is confined primarily to Muslim communities, Dr. Nafissatou J. Diop, coordinator of the Joint UNFPA-UNICEF Programme on FGM/C, told IPS the practice takes place mainly in 28 African and West Asian countries.

But it also exists in a number of Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Kurdistan, and also among migrant communitie…

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Mar 14 2011 (IPS) – The graves at a cemetery in Moach Goth have no epitaphs, no verses from the Koran, not even the names of the deceased. The only inscription on the small wooden signs that serve as headstones is a number and the date of burial. The latest one is Number 72,315.

Burial ground for unwanted babies. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

This is a burial ground of unclaimed dead, overseen by the Karachi-based Edhi Foundation. It is also the gravesite of newborns abandoned by unwed mothers who face death for bearing the fruit of illicit relationships.

Established by Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi, the foundation is South Asia s largest private social service network. For the past six decades, it has been providing bur…

Mantoe Phakathi

MBABANE, Apr 6 2011 (IPS) – The fight against tuberculosis in Swaziland will be reinforced on two fronts this month. A new tool for the quick and accurate diagnosis of TB will begin its roll out and a monthly stipend for treatment supporters will help ensure patients get through the lengthy and unpleasant course of TB drugs.

Treatment supporter Zodwa Mhlabane talks to a patient. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

Swaziland declared TB a national emergency on Mar. 24, World Tuberculosis Day. Swaziland has an estimated 11,000 TB patients, including 400 who have drug resistant strains of the disease.

TB is the leading cause of mortality in the country. It is also one of the primary oppor…

ALAPPUZHA, India, May 11 2011 (IPS) – It was smooth sailing for 30-year-old Susan George throughout her pregnancy, until the day she went to give birth at the government hospital. Doctors told her they had to do a caesarean section because they could not wait for a normal delivery.
George, a fish vendor, pleaded for a natural delivery, but no one heard her. There was a rush of pregnant women, hence the C-section, said doctors at the hospital in Cherthala town in Alappuzha district in the southern Indian state of Kerala, when George was admitted on Apr. 19.

The hospital is capable of handling only six surgeries a day, and lacks maternity and newborn care facilities. Despite these limitations, the doctors took the risk of performing 22 C-sections in three days, because they were rushing to go on leave for the Easter holidays.

The incident came to light after several pregnant patients complained that the doctors forced them to show up for delivery before their due …

Elizabeth Whitman

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2011 (IPS) – A staggering nine million people are still awaiting HIV treatment, yet the 22 billion dollars the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says is needed to give them access to medicine and care has far from materialised.
Six billion dollars is needed to close the gap and bring care to those nine million, whose treatment, in addition to the six million already being treated, according to , would prevent 12 million new infections and 7.4 million deaths by 2020.

The treatment target of 15 million people by 2015 was finalised and adopted by member states in a declaration Friday afternoon, at the close of this week s at the United Nations.

However, raising the funds to reach those people is made difficult by the fact that overall, funding for the AIDS response has now reached a plateau, said Christoph Benn, director of the External Relations and Partnerships Cluster for the , in an interview wit…

Bibi-Aisha Wadvalla

CAIRO, Jun 22 2011 (IPS) – On a blazingly hot summer s day in Cairo, it s 36 degrees Celsius in the shade. Air-conditioners and fans whirr across the city, burdening the national electricity grid. Last summer, the populous city experienced frequent water and power cuts, causing a furore. Consumption had grown by 2,600 megawatts, an increase of 13,5 percent from 2009.

A woman lights a kerosene stove in a stairwell in Darb el Ahmar, Cairo, to heat water. Solar heating does away with this unsafe practice. Credit: SolarCITIES

Over 1,000 y…

Denis Foynes

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2011 (IPS) – International donors have given more than one billion dollars to ease the famine in Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, but U.N. officials say another billion will be needed to prevent the situation from deteriorating in other areas.

Somali women rush to a feeding centre after the soldiers of the Transitional Federal Government cannot contain the crowd in Badbado, an IDP camp. Credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price

The crisis in the East of Africa could be spira…

Fabiana Frayssinet *

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 29 2011 (IPS) – A scientific alliance in which developing countries are playing a key role has taken on the challenge of producing paediatric AIDS drugs, an area that is no longer a priority for pharmaceutical companies because mother-to-child transmission of HIV has virtually been eliminated in the industrialised world.

HIV-positive children in Muhanga, a village in Rwanda. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

The , an international non-profit drug research and development organisation, launched the programme to develop antiretroviral (ARV) drugs adapted for children.

The programme will focus exclusively on developing child-adapted formulations for children…