BANGALORE, Mar 21 2013 (IPS) – A state-of-the-art nuclear medicine hospital for cancer treatment in the heart of Bangalore goes well with the global image of this tech-savvy city.
Staff at HCG hospital in Bangalore don safety gear before entering the Cyclotron. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS
The HealthCare Global (HCG) hospital is equipped with facilities to manufacture and trade in nuclear medicine and offers the advantage of easy access for cancer patients.
However, locating such a facility in downtown Bangalore has its risks, partic…
Just five countries grow nearly 90 percent of all biotech crops. Credit: Bigstock
WASHINGTON, May 14 2013 (IPS) – A consumer protection group here is accusing U.S. diplomats of engaging in a concerted and at times forceful advocacy campaign on behalf of genetically modified seeds and even specific biotechnology companies, particularly aiming to influence governments in developing countries.
In a released Tuesday, Food Water Watch (FWW) offers new research suggesting that the U.S. State Department over the past decade has offered centralised directives to U.S. embassies to promote biotech products and respond to industry concerns.“Biotech is such a controversial po…
Children in drought-struck Camotán, in Chiquimula province, Guatemala. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 6 2013 (IPS) – Kevin’s Carter’s disturbing picture of the 1993 famine in Sudan won him a Pulitzer Prize.
The image of an emaciated child being watched by a vulture was etched into the world s memory forever, drawing attention to conditions where survival becomes the only priority.
Reducing the child mortality rate and improving maternal health prominently figure in the list of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were adopted by the international community in 2000 in New York with a 2015 deadline.Malnutrition i…
An acid survivor in Bangladesh is rebuilding her life with help from the Department for International Development (DFID). Credit: Narayan Nath/FCO/Department for International Development (DFID)/CC-BY-2.0
KOLKATA, India, Jul 16 2013 (IPS) – Preeti Rathi was just 25 years old when she passed away in a Mumbai hospital exactly a month after a man threw acid on her while she stood waiting on a railway platform.
Rathi had travelled from India’s capital, New Delhi, to work as a nurse at INHS Ashwini, the naval hospital in south Mumbai. Despite closed-circuit television footage of the railway platform on which the attack took place, and massive protests launc…
Anna Shen interviews SIDDHARTH CHATTERJEE of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
NEW YORK, Sep 3 2013 (IPS) – Africa and Pakistan are now battling outbreaks of polio, threatening the extraordinary progress the world has made in fighting the almost-extinct disease. In the Horn of Africa, there are now 121 reported polio cases. Last year, there were 223 worldwide.
Siddharth Chatterjee has served as the chief diplomat, head of strategic partnerships and international relations at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world’s largest humanitarian network, since June 2011.
Lusha Chen interviews Dr. NIGEL SIZER of the World Resources Institute
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 2013 (IPS) – In June, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were enveloped in haze as hundreds of forest fires burned across the island of Sumatra, in the worst pollution crisis to hit Southeast Asia in more than a decade.
Dr. Nigel Sizer, Courtesy of the World Resources Institute
An analysis by the U.S.-based World Resources Institute (WRI) determined that 150,000 square kilometres burned more than twice the size of Singapore. Worse, nearly three-quarters of the fires in the study area burned on peatland (a soil laye…
HIV patients who do not adhere to their ART will often develop drug resistance. Credit Jennifer McKellar/IPS
BULAWAYO , Dec 18 2013 (IPS) – Each month, scores of people living with HIV gather at Mpilo s Opportunistic Infections Clinic in Bulawayo for free antiretroviral medication that has improved their lives.
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage is set to expand in line with new guidelines, but experts fear weakening adherence to drug regimes will limit the benefits.
Sindiso Buzwani* is one of those who should be at the clinic, but this month he is absent. Asked why he has stopped taking medication despite his failing health, the frail-looking man…
Nqabomzi Bikitsha interviews KATE GILMORE, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Kate Gilmore, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, says we have failed to protect our girls from early marriage, from gender-based violence and from early pregnancies. Courtesy: Livia Maurizi/UNFPA
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 28 2014 (IPS) – “The future is today aged 10 and it’s an adolescent girl,” Kate Gilmore, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said in an interview with IPS in Johannesburg.
Gilmore discussed the impact on African youth of the last two decades of action on se…
Children in India’s southern city Mangalore promote demonstrations of guppy fish feeding on mosquito eggs. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.
MANGALORE, Apr 25 2014 (IPS) – Thirteen-year-old Sampreeth Monteiro’s neighbours are suddenly taking his advice seriously. “Buy a Guppy fish, it will eat all the mosquito eggs in your house. You will not get malaria again.”
Last month the St Aloysius’ high school in Mangalore city of southern India where Monteiro studies, launched a “Guppy movement” an anti-malaria campaign in collaboration with the Mangalore City Corporation. The campaign aims to control malaria using natural means – such as the Guppy fish.“Buy a Gup…
This is the last in a three-part series of about women and Option B+ in Africa
Chronic shortages of antiretroviral drugs endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands of HIV positive Mozambicans. Courtesy: Amos Zacarias
MAPUTO, Jun 19 2014 (IPS) – Chronic shortages of antiretrovirals across Mozambique are endangering the health and the lives of tens of thousands of HIV positive people on treatment.
Some 454,000 people are on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, or just under one-third of the 1.6 million Mozambicans living with HIV in 2013, according to government figures.
“Our patients complain they are not receiving the complete dosage of medicines,” says…