POPULATION-KENYA: Women's Choices Change Cities
Rose N. Oronje
NAIROBI, Jul 31 2008 (IPS) – This year the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: for the first time in history, more than half its population will be living in urban areas. In Kenya, rapid urbanisation is creating deepening poverty among urban residents.
Researchers are asking how education affects women s family planning choices Credit: Rose Oronje/IPS
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report State of the World Population published last year, poor people will make up a large part of future urban growth. Most urban growth in developing countries now stems from natural increase (more births than deaths)…
Q&A: "The Notion that Water Is Forever Is Wrong"
Interview with Irena Salina, activist filmmaker
SAN DIEGO, California, Sep 17 2008 (IPS) – Venality, greed, corruption the documentary film Flow: For Love of Water could just as easily be subtitled The Evil That Men Do.
Irena Salina Credit:
In the age-old struggle to control access to water, a lot of bad things can happen. Rival factions vie to control it, revealing that wherever water flows, so does power. The documentary explores a water crisis that cuts across continents, investigating the role privatisation plays in water use around the globe.
The film combines arresting images with staggering statistics, offering a frank and frightening look at how water is allocated. For example, westerners gladly pay over two dollars per litre for the convenience bottled water provides. Meanwhile 1.1 billion of Earth…
HEALTH: Haj Pilgrims Get Polio Drops in Int'l Eradication Plan
Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Nov 12 2008 (IPS) – As the first batches of Haj pilgrims from Pakistan arrived at Saudi Arabia s Jeddah airport for the current pilgrimage season they were, regardless of age, administered oral polio vaccine (OPV).
Finger markings prove that this child has received oral polio vaccine. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
Saudi Arabia, a polio-free country, is taking every precaution to prevent transmission of the crippling, paediatric disease from visitors belonging to four countries Pakistan, Nigeria, India and Afghanistan where the wild polio virus is still circulating.
Pakistanis will be administered OPV, regardless of age and vaccination status, on thei…
PERU: A Mining Town’s Woes
Milagros Salazar
MOROCOCHA, Peru, Jan 7 2009 (IPS) – A four-hour drive from the Peruvian capital, the town of Morococha ( coloured lake in the Quechua language) is a living example of what the mining industry has brought to many poor rural villages and towns in this country.
Mateo Rojas and his family live at the foot of Toromocho mountain. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS.
The town s high school stadium is located on top of toxic mining debris, most people have no bathrooms in their homes and receive piped water only an hour a day, and the community washing areas use contaminated water.
Everything in this town in the central hig…
HEALTH-BOTSWANA: HIV Prevalence Remains High
Sello Motseta
GABORONE, Feb 19 2009 (IPS) – Despite significant financial investments in both prevention and treatment, Botswana has been experiencing only a modest decline in HIV prevalence, especially among women.
Official estimates reveal that one in six Botswanians over 15 years lived with HIV and AIDS in 2008. This although Botswana was the first African country to provide free antiretroviral (ARV) treatment countrywide and introduce routine HIV testing in public health facilities.
Government officials, however, do not want to admit failure and claim that high prevalence might be a good sign.
In some cases, and definitely ours, high prevalence means a successful treatment programme. If more people died from AIDS, then prevalence would go down, but if you kept more people alive because of a successful ARV programme, as in our case, it is likely that prevalence will either go up or stabilise, said National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA) coordinator Ba…
HEALTH-PAKISTAN: Spacing Births for Mother and Child
Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Mar 25 2009 (IPS) – Health experts in Pakistan are now concentrating on getting women from all strata of society to space births.
Pakistan has begun encouraging birth spacing to protect the health of mother and child. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
Birth spacing gives the woman time and opportunity to recover from the nutritional deficiency caused by repeated pregnancies. Studies show that short birth intervals of less than 24 months increase the risk of neonatal mortality, says Dr. Sadiqua Jafarey, president of the National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health.
New research points to the benefits of having the f…
MEXICO: Flu Epidemic Further Undermines Sick Economy
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Apr 28 2009 (IPS) – The swine flu epidemic has dealt a new blow to the Mexican economy, already weakened by the global recession, hitting small and large companies alike.
But there are also a few winners: pharmaceutical laboratories, pharmacies, doctors and private medical clinics, as well as the home entertainment industry.
Projections issued prior to the outbreak of the epidemic last week indicated that Mexico s GDP would shrink this year by 3.7 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and by 2.8 percent according to the government.
But the epidemic will increase the fall by between 0.5 and 1.5 percent, observers say.
The longer the health emergency lasts, the greater the impact on the economy will be, economist Ángel Vega, a business consultant, told IPS.
The new flu strain that began to draw attention in Mexico last week has so far claimed 152 lives out of a total of around 2000 cases of p…
THAILAND: New Probe into ‘Drug War’ Killings Takes a Stab at Impunity
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, May 27 2009 (IPS) – A special investigative arm of Thailand s criminal justice system is set to mount a fresh probe into a massacre of civilians during a brutal war on drugs launched six years ago, when the authoritarian Thaksin Shinawatra was the country s prime minister.
Kalasin, a province in the rural northeast, will feature in this fresh probe by the department of special investigations (DSI). Kalasin s existing policy of x- raying every community to keep it narcotics free had inspired the Thaksin administration to mount its nation-wide war on drugs, beginning in early 2003.
The neighbouring province of Roi Et, which, like Kalasin, is home to this Southeast Asian nation s poor, farming communities, is also due to come under scrutiny. The northwestern province of Tak, close to the Thai-Burma border, may also face fresh probes, says a source familiar with these investigations.
It has taken more than five years for the DSI …
ZIMBABWE: Neglect Sanitation at Your Peril
Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Jul 30 2009 (IPS) – A functioning public toilet has become a rare sight in Bulawayo. Across this southern Zimbabwean city of about two million residents, public toilets have all but stopped functioning, the buildings now more useful as platforms for graffiti and campaign posters than as public conveniences where people answer the call of nature.
Community-led initiatives have so far not extended to maintaining public toilets like this one. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS
Some daring members of the public relieve themselves outside the locked doors of the colonial-era facilities in what …
SPORTS: Women Carry a New Punch
Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Aug 20 2009 (IPS) – Thanks to Clint Eastwood s blockbuster film Million Dollar Baby , his heroine Hilary Swank helped raise significantly the profile of women who climb into the boxing ring.
And, when Muhammad Ali s daughter Laila took up her father s cloak, she lit up a whole new generation of boxing fans around the world, especially when she battled the daughter of her father s great adversary, Joe Frazier.
As people around the globe sit leisurely around their TV sets watching athletes breathing hard, running and jumping and throwing for gold at the World Athletics championships in Berlin, no one currently cuts a greater figure than Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
Bolt is definitely a phenomenon, and he is re-writing the record books. Still, one half of the world may well ask what about our half, why is less TV attention in Berlin being paid the female champions?
So, it was no coincidence that also i…