Michael Standaert

GUIYU, China, May 2 2010 (IPS) – Like many who have profited from the electronic waste trade in this southern Chinese town, hospital administrator Lin Banghong does not live there. I ve worked here 10 years and haven t gotten sick, he said.

At a makeshift e-waste workshop in China s Guiyu town, a migrant worker coo…

Suleiman Mbatiah

NAIROBI, Jun 14 2010 (IPS) – Much of the initiative behind the adoption of Kenya s controversial anti-counterfeit law came from multinational pharmaceutical companies using their membership of a local manufacturers association to push the legislation.
Kenya s Anti-Counterfeit Act of 2008, aimed at stemming the supply of counterfeits, has caused widespread concern as it may lead to law enforcement agencies stopping legitimate generic medicines at the country s borders. The law s application to medicines was suspended in April 2010 pending a court challenge brought by health rights activists.

Pharmaceutical companies called on other sectors represented in the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) a few years ago to support their initiative against co…

Helda Martínez

BOGOTÁ, Jul 13 2010 (IPS) – In Colombia, western medicine has nearly succeeded in pushing midwives parteras or comadronas, as they are known in Spanish out of existence. But some tenacious practitioners are pushing for a law to formalise the role of midwife as a health worker.

Rosmilda and Liceth Quiñones on a visit to Bogotá. Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS

Through 2009 and so far in 2010, there have been no deaths of women attended by a member of the United Midwives of the Pacific Association…

NAIROBI, Aug 4 2010 (IPS) – Precious Nabwire nearly died giving birth to her fourth child. If Kenyan gynaecologists have their way, a drug to control bleeding after childbirth will be licensed, offering greater protection to tens of thousands of women facing similar danger.
Her daughter named Chausiku, she of the night , in honour of her arrival just past midnight was born in Nabwire s home.

My labour began in the night and getting to Pumwani Maternity Hospital was out of question because I would have had to use a taxi and this would have cost a tidy sum of 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($12.50 U.S.), Nabwire recounts.

She sent for a traditional birth attendant who lived nearby. Nabwire was sure the delivery would be as smooth as her first three.

How wrong I was.…

Matthew Berger

WASHINGTON, Sep 2 2010 (IPS) – A loan deal between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and flood-stricken Pakistan announced Thursday has drawn the ire of several NGOs that claim the deal represents an inadequate and cynical response to the disaster that is estimated to have affected the lives of millions.
The news of the loan follows more than a week of talks between Pakistani and IMF officials here, in which Pakistan hoped some of the terms of the 10.66 billion dollar loan granted in 2008 would be loosened in light of the floods which have left a dent in the Pakistani economy that is likely to last long after the floodwaters have receded.

Those loan terms set deficit and inflation targets Pakistan has said it will be unable to meet in a post-flood e…

Charles Mpaka

LILONGWE, Sep 24 2010 (IPS) – In Ntcheu, a rural district in central Malawi, villagers have taken the fight against the country s high maternal mortality rate into their own hands. They have almost eradicated maternal deaths in the area by urging pregnant women to give birth in hospitals, under medical supervision.
Chief Kwataine, who has 89 villages in Ntcheu under his traditional authority, launched a maternal health campaign that first addressed common cultural beliefs associated with pregnancy, for example that a woman s first child should be born at home or that the men of the family decide when women need medical attention. Kwataine also banned all traditional birth attendants in his villages, compelling women to give birth in hospital.

These measu…

Isaiah Esipisu

VIHIGA, Western Kenya, Oct 18 2010 (IPS) – Pastor Joseph Muhembeli and his wife, Beatrice, queue at the Vihiga health centre with their six-month-old daughter for their prevention of mother-to-child treatment (PMTCT). But before long, as per the clinic s policy, the couple are whisked to the front of the line all because Muhembeli has accompanied his wife for the treatment.

HIV-positive couple Joseph and Beatrice Muhembeli have bee…

Matthew O. Berger

WASHINGTON, Nov 19 2010 (IPS) – Rising food prices have not yet reached crisis levels but they are expected to remain very volatile for about the next decade, researchers said Thursday.
The conclusions were based on a new study of the factors that contributed to the 2007-08 food crisis, which researchers hope will shed light on what actions might be taken to avoid food crises in the future.

There were many suspects for what caused the crisis, but little evidence, said Derek Headey, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, who co- authored the report. Three years on, there is more evidence.

The IFPRI study cites a perfect storm of factors: rising energy prices, demand for biofuels, depreciation of the U.S. dolla…

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…