Arsène Séverin
BRAZZAVILLE, Jan 8 2008 (IPS) – At the Integrated Health Centre of Bissita, located in the Bacongo area of Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, pregnant women seated on a long bench wait to have prenatal examinations.
A member of this talkative group, Sylvie Bakani*, wears a concerned expression. Due to deliver in a few weeks, she is also HIV positive.
The doctor wanted her to take the test when she arrived for the first time at the centre, three months pregnant. When the test was positive, her husband threw her out, accusing her of being a prostitute. With time, she regained her courage, and (now) comes daily to be weighed, Eugénie Mbondji, Sylvie s mother, explained to IPS.
This situation encapsulates the problems facing thos…
Michael J. Carter
SEATTLE, Washington, Nov 13 2008 (IPS) – Working for sustainable development in Kenya, which ranks 148th out of 177 countries on the United Nations development index, is a daunting task. The country not only has a 6.1 percent rate of HIV/AIDS infection among its 37 million people, but nearly 60 percent of Kenyans live on less than two dollars a day.
Children gather in front of the newly painted and expanded Rabuor Nursery Schoo…
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Jan 8 2009 (IPS) – Egyptian authorities have almost fully sealed the border with Gaza, preventing delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid.
The government has expressly forbidden the entry of aid convoys laden with food into the Gaza Strip, Emmad al-Din Moustafa, member of the Popular Committee for Aiding Gaza told IPS. The continued border closure like the Israeli assault itself constitutes a crime against humanity.
Israel began a series of devastating air strikes on targets throughout the Gaza Strip Dec. 27, followed by a ground offensive launched Jan. 3. According to Israeli officials, the campaign, which has included thousands of air strikes and naval bombardment, comes in retaliation for rockets fired at Isr…
Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Mar 28 2010 (IPS) – A high-level meeting in London of political and business leaders will consider this week ways of raising 100 billion dollars to fight climate change. And yet another one in Washington will search for ways of finding, and funding, more three-dollar stoves around the world.
The second one is more ambitious than it sounds; it aims to get more than half a billion clean stoves around the world. But working with the little and the tangible, it might just be more effective than the London meet. And, it brings simultaneous health benefits.
The Britain-based Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy is pushing strongly for cleaner stoves around the world. Fighting climate change and improving the health of the world s poorest people are often…
There are an estimated 13,000 pieces of plastic litter afloat every single square kilometer of ocean. Credit: Bo Eide Snemann/CC-BY-2.0
ATHENS, Oct 10 2014 (IPS) – Imagine a black-footed albatross feeding its chick plastic pellets, a baby seal in the North Pole helplessly struggling with an open-ended plastic bag wrapped tight around its neck, or a fishing vessel stranded mid-sea, a length of discarded nylon net entangled in its propeller. Multiply these scenarios a thousand-fold, and you get a glimpse of the state of the world’s oceans.
With an average of estimated to be afloat every single square kilometer of ocean globally, and 6.4 million tonnes …
Vladimir Smakhtin is Director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, funded by the Government of Canada and hosted by McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
Open sewage in Uganda slum. Credit: I. Jurga, SuSanA
HAMILTON, Canada, Mar 19 2020 (IPS) – As the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic spreads, guidance on how wash your hands and other measures intensifies.
These recommendations are important, but they are hardly of value to the 40% of humanity lacking access to even the most basic hand washing requirements — soap and water 1.
In most African countries or India, the proportion is even higher – between…