President Barack Obama signs executive orders initiating 23 separate executive actions after announcing new measures to help prevent gun violence on Jan. 16, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

WASHINGTON, Mar 14 2013 (IPS) – Eighteen Nobel Peace Prize recipients called Thursday for President Barack Obama to take a leadership role in supporting a “historic” internationally binding agreement that would regulate the global arms trade, including instituting a strict ban on arms sales to states involved in egregious human rights abuses.

The call comes just ahead of a final round of negotiations towards an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), slated to be held Mar. 18-28 at the United Nations in New York. Advocates, particularly in Africa and Latin America, are pushing for an ATT that would fill a longstanding and fundamentally dangerous anomaly – th…

Farmers on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Credit: Kastom Gaden Association (KGA)

HONIARA, Solomon Islands, May 7 2013 (IPS) – Life is difficult enough for communities on the remote southern Weather Coast of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.  Sustaining a livelihood from the land is a daily struggle on the steep coastal mountain slopes that plunge to the sea, made worse by the absence of adequate roads, transport and government services. And now, climate change is taking its toll on the already precarious food situation here.

“From mid-March to June it is always raining and whatever crops we grow will not go to harvest,” Alice, a member of a farming family on the Weather Coast, told IPS, referring to the period locals here call “time hungry”.

During these months, most meals c…

Meeting on health and food security in the Caingangue Guarita Reserve in southern Brazil. Credit: Courtesy of Marcos Antonio Ribeiro

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil , Jun 1 2013 (IPS) – Healthcare for Brazil’s indigenous minority is in poor health, according to U.N. experts, missionaries, social workers and native people themselves.

Ida Pietricovsky, an adviser to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the northern city of Belem do Pará, stressed the lack of systematic information on the health of indigenous people.

Speaking to IPS, officials at the Health Ministry’s communication office blamed the shortcomings on the incomplete transition in healthcare for indigenous communities, which in 2010 began to be transferred from the National Health Foundation (FUNASA) to the Special Secretariat on Indigenous Health (SESAI).

Whatever the case, the situati…

Beatrice Mudachi does not like delivering in hospital because she says her first baby was neglected by hospital staff. Courtesy: Miriam Gathigah

NAIROBI , Jul 9 2013 (IPS) – It has been a month since the Kenyan government waived the maternity fee at public health facilities, but Millicent Awino is still one of the many expectant mothers in favour of a home birth.

“During childbirth my uterus comes out, a traditional birth attendant has the knowledge of how to push the uterus back into position, unlike at the hospital,” Awino tells IPS.

Alice Anyango, a traditional birth attendant from Nairobi’s Mathare slums, tells IPS: “The uterus should not be touched with hands as they do in hospital, hence damaging it. One should throw a pitcher of cold water at it and it will retreat back to position.”

But her treatment is not medically sound. Profess…

The armed group Séléka recently reinforced its position in the northern provinces of the Central African Republic, notably in the northwest city of Paoua. Credit: Simon Davis/UK DFID/CC by 2.0

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 2013 (IPS) – As Michel Djotodia took his oath as the new president of the Central African Republic (CAR) on Aug. 18, Séléka, the coalition of rebel groups that he led and that helped him overthrow the government on Mar. 23, were still looting and killing civilians.

Already among the poorest nations in the world, this landlocked Central African country has seen its humanitarian crisis intensify over the last month as attacks by the Séléka multiplied in areas outside Bangui, CAR’s capital.

Order was partially restored in the capital as the international community convinced Djotodia to back down and change his title to interim presi…

A demonstrator holds up an anti-U.N. poster during an October 2010 protest outside a MINUSTAH base in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Ansel Herz/IPS

UNITED NATIONS/PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 31 2013 (IPS) – Some 2,400 kilometres from New York City, where victims of Haiti s cholera epidemic are suing the United Nations in a U.S. federal court, the disease continues to burn through the populace with no end in sight.

In a single week between Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, the Pan-American Health Organisation reported 1,512 new cases and 31 deaths. New cases are reported in all 10 departments.”It is clear that damage has been caused, the negligence of the U.N. is proven and it must assume its responsibilities.” — Mario Joseph of BAI

At the Cholera Treatment Centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in Delmas 33, a commune in Port-au-Prince Arrondis…

Patented drugs limit patients’ access to public health care. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Dec 12 2013 (IPS) – Paul Anley, chief executive officer of Pharma Dynamics, one of South Africa’s leading generic drug companies, wants to sell a cheaper version of popular birth control pill Yasmin. But he legally cannot because German multinational Bayer has patent protection on the drug in South Africa, even though its initial patent expired in 2010.

Generic versions of the contraceptive are available in the United States and Europe, where Bayer’s patent has been revoked.

Anley says South Africa’s patent system …

The Jangwani slum in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was flooded during the heavy rain at the end of 2013 and early this year. Credit: Muhidin Issa Michuzi/IPS

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 18 2014 (IPS) – Residents in low-lying areas in Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, are potentially at risk of contracting waterborne diseases as heavy rains, which started last week, continue to pound the city.

Early this month, the announced that Dar es Salaam was among the areas in northern and southern Tanzania that would receive above-average rainfall and strong winds in the coming weeks, and urged residents to take precautions.

Tanzania’s eastern Morogoro Region was also affected in January as flash floods displaced over 10,000 people and damaged infrastructure such as roads and houses.
Related IPS Articles

In Jangwani and  Kigogo, administrative areas in Dar es…

In this column, Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, warns that humanity is looking at a future in which antibiotics will no longer work, unless an effective global action plan is launched to address the crisis.

GENEVA, Apr 10 2014 (IPS) – The growing crisis of antibiotic resistance is catching the attention of policy-makers, but not at a fast enough rate to tackle it. More diseases are affected by resistance, meaning the bacteria cannot be killed even if different drugs are used on some patients, who then succumb.

We are staring at a future in which antibiotics don t work, and many of us or our children will not be saved from TB, cholera, deadly forms of dysentery, and germs contracted during surgery.

Martin Khor

The World Health Organisation (WHO) will discuss, at its annual assembly of health ministers in May, a resolution on micr…