Marcela Valente *

Dr. Mabel Bianco shows a female condom to three young women on a street in Buenos Aires. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 30 2011 (IPS) – In spite of the growing spread of HIV/AIDS among women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the female condom, which could put them in charge of their health, is not readily available.

Dr. Mabel Bianco shows a female condom to three young women on a street in Bue…

CAPE TOWN , Jan 27 2012 (IPS) – If there was no HIV/AIDS, South Africa would have 4.4 million more people than today, the size of a major city. This significant slow-down in population growth is causing a slow down in economic growth and resulting in social ills, researchers warn.

HIV/AIDS has caused a steady increase in the number of orphans in South Africa. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

New data by research organisation (SAIRR) show that South Africa should theoretically count 55 million citizens this year. But it only has a population of 50.6 million.

By 2040, the country’s population would have been 77.5 million without AIDS – 24.1 mi…

Phares Jerome and Valery Daudier* – IPS/The Nouvelliste

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 7 2012 (IPS) – The drawdown of hundreds of non-governmental organisations which have been in Haiti since the disastrous 2010 earthquake was inevitable. But with their departure, so too goes their purse and the millions earmarked for cleaning latrines.
What does that mean for the half a million displaced still living in camps?

Some 11,000 mobile toilets were installed by a rainbow of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) following the earthquake. Supplied largely by the Clinton Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development and UNICEF, and then redistributed by the NGO community to hundreds of camps, these latrines improved the living conditions and staved off pend…

SRINAGAR, Apr 17 2012 (IPS) – Recent research has found that over 90 percent of haemophilia patients across Kashmir are also affected by hepatitis due to the dearth of safe Anti- Haemophilic Factor (AHF) in the Valley.

Haemophiliac children receive treatment at Srinagar hospital. Credit: Sana Altaf/IPS

The long-term use of Fresh Frozen Plasma (FFP) as a substitute for AHF has put hundreds of haemophilia patients at high risk of contracting deadly infections, mainly hepatitis.

A survey conducted by members of the Haemophilia Society of Kashmir in 2011 found that out of 137 haemophilia patients registered at Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital, 115 were affected by hepatitis…

Students at the Autism Awareness, Care and Treatment Centre doing arts and crafts. Credit: Jamila Akweley Okertchiri/IPS

ACCRA, May 18 2012 (IPS) – At first glance Nortey Quaynor looks like any ordinary 29-year-old Ghanaian. If you spend a little time with him, though, you soon realise that something is different.

He avoids eye contact and gives one-word answers to most questions. Sometimes he covers his ears with his hands to block out the sounds of children in a nearby playground.

When he was just an infant Quaynor was diagnosed with autism, a developmental disorder that is characterised by impaired social interactions.

Nortey is a good guy only if you understand what autism is, said Abeiku Grant, who taught Quaynor at the Autism Awareness, Care and Training Centre in Accra when he was younger.

If you don’t, you see him …

MONTREAL, Jul 3 2012 (IPS) – As major cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) came into effect across Canada last week, medical professionals say both refugees and the Canadian healthcare system as a whole will pay a heavy price.

(This is a) government document that we can read that explicitly says we are denying patients with chronic conditions and acute illnesses medications and in many cases, any treatment at all. (It s) unheard of, said Dr. Philip Berger, chief of family medicine at St-Michael s Hospital in Toronto, and a member of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, a grassroots group of healthcare professionals that has come out against the cuts.

It s one of those rare, exceptional circumstances in life where there is no room for compromise. Doctors cannot distinguish (between) patients who need healthcare on the basis of their refugee category, Berger told IPS.

IFHP provides limited health coverage to approximately 128,000 protected persons,…

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 2012 (IPS) – Is a gene more like a tree trunk or more like a baseball bat? A federal court Thursday took a stand on the question, ruling that isolated DNA molecules are “not found in nature , and are therefore more like inventions, such as baseball bats, than natural phenomenon, such as tree trunks.

Structure of the BRCA1 protein. Credit: emw/creative commons

Using language steeped in metaphor in a packed U.S. federal courtroom, attorneys in July debated the question in a closely-watched case on the right to patent genes that has been working its way through the courts.

At stake: the right of one company – Myriad Genetics to patent a gene as a human invention under U.S. patent law, which allows patents on inventions but not on products of nature.

In a ruling that larg…

A child grimaces as he receives a measles vaccination at a school in Charsarda District in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in 2010. Credit: UN Photo/UNICEF/ZAK

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2012 (IPS) – Pakistan, where some 126,000 children under five years old die from pneumonia every year, launched a new pneumococcal vaccine Tuesday, making it the first South Asian country to do so.

Pneumonia is the most common killer of children under five, and 99 percent of these deaths occur in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Some 1.4 million children under the age of five die each year of pneumonia more than child deaths by HIV/AIDS, tuburculosis, and malaria combined. And 550,000 of these deaths occur in South Asia alone, according to the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.

The Global …

Israeli soldiers and police blocking Palestinians from one of the entrances to the old city in Jerusalem. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

WASHINGTON, Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – Israel tops the list of the world’s most militarised nations, according to the latest Global Militarisation Index released Tuesday by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC).

At number 34, Israel’s main regional rival, Iran, is far behind. Indeed, every other Near Eastern country, with the exceptions of Yemen (37) and Qatar (43), is more heavily militarised than the Islamic Republic, , whose research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Singapore ranks second, followed by Syria, Russia, Jordan, and Cyprus, according to the Index, which is based on a number of weighted variables, such as the comparison of a country’s military bu…