Tarjei Kidd Olsen

OSLO, Jun 3 2008 (IPS) – Millions of people are threatened by poor, unreliable, or non-existent water resources, and climate change could make things worse. IPS looked at some of the issues before participants at a World Bank conference on water and sanitation issues held in Oslo last week.
In 2008, the United Nations (U.N.) International Year of Sanitation, it is estimated that 2.16 billion people in developing countries lack that most basic of amenities a proper toilet. They do not have water conveniently pumped in and out of their homes for use in flush toilets. Many have no choice but to relieve themselves in ditches, behind the house, down the road, or at any other convenient location.

The result: widespread damage to human health and child survival prospects; social misery especially for women, the elderly and infirm; depressed economic productivity and human development; pollution to the living environment and water resources, according to…

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jul 1 2008 (IPS) – Few in the Chinese capital are aware of the price their city would pay for staging the world s first green Olympics in August. The fabulous capital of Chinese emperors and the epitome of modern China s ambitions is being driven to extinction by its chronic lack of water. And the Olympic games are expediting the city s slow demise, according to experts.
Within a generation this city would cease to exist, says Dai Qing, China s best-known environmentalist. We won t have the ancient capital any longer and the ugly modern Beijing would disappear too. Unfortunately, government officials and Beijing residents are equally unaware of how serious the water crisis is.

When the Olympic games open on Aug. 8, visitors will marvel at musical fountains and huge water landscapes throughout the capital. Spectators will enjoy rowing competitions on the dried out Chaobai river which has been brought back to life by diverting water thro…

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)…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…