PORT-LOUIS, Mauritius, Jan 3 2011 (IPS) – Sex workers rights are human rights , close to a hundred people shouted during a recent march in Rose-Hill, a major town in Mauritius. Their aim was to sensitise the population, particularly the parliamentarians, to the state of sex workers on the island.
Sex workers marching for human rights Credit: Nasseem Ackbarrally/IPS
Beaten by their clients and even by police officers, looked down upon by the public and ill treated at hospitals and in other institutions, these women have many door…
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 18 2011 (IPS) – One of the potential impacts of climate change that arouses most concern is an increase in diseases transmitted by tropical insects, like Chagas disease, Argentina s main endemic illness.
However, while they are aware of shifting climate zones, experts consider the biggest threat of expansion of Chagas disease to arise not from global warming, but from inadequate control of its transmission vectors (insect carriers), which have already been eliminated in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.
Vectors capable of transmitting the disease are present in 19 of Argentina s 24 provinces, epidemiologist Sergio Sosa-Estani, head of the vector-borne disease unit at the Health Ministry, told IPS. In some areas, the vectors are under contro…
Keya Acharya
BANGALORE, Mar 16 2011 (IPS) – Several incinerator facilities that were supposed to turn waste into energy have proven to be white elephants that are now adding to the country s pollution woes, instead of alleviating them.
Massive waste-to-energy plant subsidies are ruining the waste management field in India, said Almitra Patel, a civil engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. Companies are now using these subsidies to set up plants that fail.
Solid waste experts are alarmed these facilities which failed to work in the 1980s and 1990s continue to exist.
Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, are releasing toxic fumes because wastes are not being burned properly. Waste incineration technology controversial in western countries i…
Aline Cunico
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2011 (IPS) – According to a special series in the medical journal The Lancet presented in New York Wednesday at the U.N. children s agency UNICEF, over 2.6 million stillbirths occur worldwide annually, affecting mostly African and Asian women who lack proper access to health care and facilities.
We need to be more aware, Dr. Ruth Fretts, a stillbirth expert and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, told IPS. We need to review all stillbirths systematically so that we can develop strategies for prevention. Stillbirths are a great burden to women, and are life- changing events.
Fretts added that lack of awareness and health access, affecting mostly pregnant women in developing countries, hamper attempts to reduce stillbirth…
Sanjay Suri
ISTANBUL, May 16 2011 (IPS) – For Jany Chen from Shanghai, concern often-raised in Europe and North America about the Chinese invasion of Africa is a lot of wasteful talk that deserves to be flushed down the toilet. Efficiently.
Jany Chen, CEO of Shanghai Environmental Group, speaks with IPS. Credit: Sanjay Suri/IPS
Chen is chief executive officer of the Shanghai Yiyuan Environmental Group, a company that claims breakthrough technology in conservation of water. Chen dismisses sugge…
Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jun 15 2011 (IPS) – Cooperation between India and Brazil in pharmaceuticals and medical biotechnology has begun to falter, because Indian authorities would rather collaborate with western counterparts than those in developing countries, new research shows.
As a result, cooperation between the two countries, once touted as capable of solving public health problems in the developing world, has failed to come up with marketable products.
The study by the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a publicly funded think tank based in New Delhi, cited as a reason for product failure the lingering perception in concerned Indian ministries and departments that collaboration with the North (referring to developed countries) is mu…
Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, U.S., Jun 27 2011 (IPS) – Iran is drawing international criticism for its continued mass executions of people convicted of violating its drug laws. The Islamic Republic s judiciary reported that 300 people were on death row as of May 30.
For 300 drug-related convicts, including those who were in possession of at least 30 grammes of heroin, execution verdicts have been issued, said Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, Tehran s prosecutor- general, according to the Sharq daily newspaper.
The Iranian government has already hanged 126 people for drug offences so far this year, as of May 30, according to , a death penalty abolition organisation.
Iran executed 650 people in 2010, 590 of whom were convicted for drug offences, according to the…
DOHA, Aug 2 2011 – Record levels of radiation have been recorded at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant reactor, just months after the nuclear accident resulting from the earthquake and tsunami in March.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported that Geiger counters a hand-held device used to measure radiation registered their highest possible reading at the site on Monday.
TEPCO said that radiation exceeding 10 sieverts [10,000 millisieverts] per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors.
Al Jazeera s Aela Callan, reporting from Japan s Ibaraki prefecture, said the level recorded was fatal to humans but that it was contained just to the plant s site. However, scientists are planning to carry out more tests on Tuesday.…
Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Sep 8 2011 (IPS) – Having to contend with U.S. army drones and the crossfire between the Taliban and the Pakistani army, the residents of Pakistan s tribal areas find access to treatment for HIV/AIDS harder than in most other parts of the world.
AIDS awareness seminar for medical students and HIV infected people in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
Currently, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in the Federally Administered…
Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 21 2011 (IPS) – Economic status, education, access to clean water and sanitation, nutrition and the environment determine the level of health of persons, communities or countries, and so does the extent to which rights are enjoyed or denied.
Native Guaraní woman cooking in the village of Cantagalo in southern Brazil. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS
The , held Oct. 19-21 in Brazil, defined 15 commitments that should be …