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…

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…

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…

Danielle Nierenberg is Founder and President of . Emily Payne is a food and agriculture writer based in New York

Credit: Bigstock

NEW ORLEANS, United States, May 29 2018 (IPS) – Many factors contribute to the cost of a tomato. For example, what inputs were used (water, soil, fertilizer, pesticides, as well as machinery and/or labor) to grow it? What kind of energy and materials were used to process and package it? Or how much did transportation cost to get it to the shelf?

But that price doesn’t always reflect how the plant was grown—overuse and misuse of antibiotics, water pollution from pesticide runoff, or whether or not farm workers harvesting the tomatoes were paid a fair wage. It turns out cheap food often comes with an enormously expensive cost to human and planetary health.

Women with Disabilities Speak out Against Exclusion at ICPD25