Outdated Approaches Fuelling TB in Russia, Say NGOs
MOSCOW, Jul 14 2014 (IPS) – When Veronika Sintsova was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2009, she spent six months in hospital before being discharged and allowed to continue treatment as an outpatient.
Today clear of the disease, the 35-year-old former drug user from Kaliningrad says the fact that she beat tuberculosis (TB) is not because of, but rather in spite of, the way many people with tuberculosis are treated in Russia.
“I think it would be fair to say that Russian authorities don’t take the problem of tuberculosis seriously,” she told IPS.
Tuberculosis is a major health threat in Russia, where it is the leading infectious disease killer.The country has the highest rates of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extremely drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis in Europe and the third highest in the world. And those rates are climbing.Tuberculosis exploded in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union as health care infrastructure crumbled, the country was th…
These Children Just Want to Go Back to School
About 518,000 primary school students have sat idle over the last decade as a result of the Taliban’s campaign against secular education. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Aug 26 2014 (IPS) – Between government efforts to wipe out insurgents from Pakistan’s northern, mountainous regions, and the Taliban’s own campaign to exercise power over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the real victims of this conflict are often invisible.
Walking among the rubble of their old homes, or sitting outside makeshift shelters in refugee camps, thousands of children here are growing up without an education, as schools are either bombed by militants or turned into temporary housing for the displaced.
Schools have been under attack since 2001, when members of the Taliban fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan took refuge across the border in ne…
Floods Wash Away India’s MDG Progress
When isolated by floodwaters, families have no choice but to use boats for transportation; even children must learn the survival skill of rowing. Here in India’s Morigaon district, one week of rains in August affected 27,000 hectares of land. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS
MORIGAON, India, Oct 7 2014 (IPS) – The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush, 30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty rivers and spill over into villages and towns, inundating agricultural lands and washing homes, possessions and livestock away.
Now, the long-term impacts of such natural disasters are proving to be a thorn in the side of a government that is racing against time to meet its commitments under the Mill…
U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals Remain Intact
Pakistani fishermen perform multiple tasks on their boat. This man makes fresh rotis (flat bread) from whole-meal flour, which the men eat with the fish they catch. Critics are demanding far stronger proposals to address extreme economic inequality and climate change from the U.N. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2014 (IPS) – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has refused to jettison any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by an Open Working Group of member states: goals aimed at launching the U.N. s new post-2015 development agenda through 2030.
In a new report synthesising the 17 goals, Ban said he was rearranging them in a focused and concise manner that enables us to communicate them to our partners and the global public .
The report, titled , presents an integrated set of six essential elements: dignity, people, prosperi…
Nobel Peace Laureate Calls for Global Human Compassion to Combat Child Slavery
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2015 (IPS) – Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi has called for globalised human compassion to combat the global and persistent problems of child labour and child slavery.
“We live in a globalised world, let us globalise human compassion, ” Satyarthi told an audience at the United Nations Tuesday.
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kailash Satyarthi speaks at the DPI/NGO Special Briefing: Ending Child Slavery by 2030. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
Satyarthi, a tireless activist against child labour, received the in 2014 together with Malala Yousafzai “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”
Satyarthi said that he…
Urban Slums a Death Trap for Poor Children
Children on their way to school in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi. Credit: Save the Children
UNITED NATIONS, May 5 2015 (IPS) – It’s called the urban survival gap – fuelled by the growing inequality between rich and poor in both developing and developed countries – and it literally determines whether millions of infants will live or die before their fifth birthday.
Save the Children’s annual report on the ranks 179 countries and concludes that that for babies born in the big city, it s the survival of the richest.
Speaking from the launch at U.N. Headquarters, Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, said that for the first time in history, more families are moving into citi…
Helping People with Disabilities Become Agents of Change
Disability and poverty are interrelated, due to discrimination and lower education and employment levels. Credit: Bigstock
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2015 (IPS) – Participation, political and economic empowerment, inclusion, accessible technology and infrastructure as well as indicators for meaningful implementation are among the key issues persons with disabilities want to see reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In light of the ongoing negotiations on the post-2015 development framework, people with disabilities are calling upon governments to put an end to exclusion and discrimination by making persons with disabilities and their rights more visible in the SDGs.“We can no longer afford the cost of exclusion.” — Catalina D…
Humanitarian Response in Afghanistan Falters in the Face of Intensifying Conflict
This little boy, an Afghan refugee, eats a piece of candy outside his family’s makeshift tent. Credit: DVIDSHUB/CC-BY-2.0
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 2015 (IPS) – As the number of civilians impacted by the intensifying conflict in Afghanistan rises along with the fighting, humanitarian agencies are struggling to meet the needs of the wounded, hungry and displaced.
The first half of 2015 has seen “record high levels” of civilian casualties, the United Nations relief agency said Tuesday, with civilian deaths touching 1,592 and total non-combatant casualties standing at over 4,900 a one-percent increase compared to the number of casualties in the same period in 2014.
Fresh fighting in the provinces of Helmand, Kunduz, Faryab and Nangarhar are indicative of the geographic spread of the conflict, while tensions and sporadic clashes all across th…
Immigration – Still a Pending Issue in Cuban-U.S. Relations
Hundreds of Cubans gathered outside the Ecuadorean embassy in Havana in an infrequent public display of discontent, protesting Quito’s decision to require that Cubans visiting Ecuador obtain a visa. Many held up the airplane tickets they had already bought, asking to be given visas or to be reimbursed for the money they had spent. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
HAVANA, Dec 10 2015 (IPS) – The crisis that has broken out at several border crossings in Latin America as a result of thousands of Cubans attempting to reac…
Poverty Puzzles
Apr 22 2016 – Whichever way you parse the data we have it shows that poverty headcount in Pakistan over the last decade and a half to two decades has decreased substantially. Initially, it was thought the data was not good enough, that it had been manipulated and so on, but even after multiple rounds of national surveys, the same trends are evident. And though the actual percentage of the poor may vary with the method one uses, the trend of falling poverty remains invariant. There must be something to this trend.
Poverty headcount, by the old line, has reduced to below 10pc in recent surveys. It is common practice, when poverty headcount goes below 10pc odd, to rebase the poverty line so that it gives some meaningful numbers. Social policy, if it has to work with less than 10pc odd of the population, is not as effective and/or useful. When all sorts of analyses confirmed that Pakistan`s poverty headcount had indeed gone below 10pc, the ministries of finance and planning, wit…