Mohammed Omer*
AMSTERDAM, Jan 9 2009 (IPS) – On the phone from Gaza, Zahrah Salem shares the news she has just seen, that so many at the White House were deeply saddened by the death of the cat India Willie. Why, she asks, is nobody at the White House deeply saddened by the death of so many children in Gaza.
After a pause she says, At least the cat did not die hungry, like the children in Gaza.
Zahrah Salem, 64, has four children and 15 grandchildren to worry about. Day after day of bombing brings blessing they are still there. We all sleep in one room, she says. So if we die, we die together. What if we die and the children don t, we don t want to leave them behind to suffer.
These days the injuries suffered by this IPS correspondent at the hands of the Isr…
Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Feb 24 2009 (IPS) – Quickly after the idyllic scenes presented in the film, the story changes. The group of vigorous young men are home, greeted at the airport with flowers, hugs, kisses by loved ones and girlfriends. And then you find that the main character of the film Willkommen zu hause ( Welcome Home ) is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The soldier is shown to have survived an attack by Taliban militias in Afghanistan, and now he cannot forget the bloody scenes he witnessed. But his story is not fictional. PTSD has been a real life problem among thousands of soldiers all over the world, and among many German soldiers returning home from Afghanistan.
The day Welcome home was broadcast, Feb. 3, the German ministry of defenc…
Kristin Palitza
DURBAN, Mar 31 2009 (IPS) – The money to scale up HIV treatment is there, but implementation of programmes to curb the pandemic is a problem, health experts said at the opening of the Fourth South African AIDS Conference in Durban.
Health scientists, activists, health workers and politicians from 52 countries have come together to discuss latest strategies to fight the pandemic under the theme Scale Up for Success .
Dr John Hargrove, director of SACEMA, the centre for epidemiological modelling and analysis of the South African Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation, recommended safe medical male circumcision and antiretroviral (ARV) treatment as key strategies to prevent the spread of HIV.
Male circumcision ha…
Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 30 2009 (IPS) – Esther de Anda has stopped eating pork since the appearance of swine flu in Mexico. They say there s no problem in eating it, but for now I prefer fish or chicken, the homemaker told IPS.
Her response was typical of many consumers in Mexico, where the pork industry has come under scrutiny since the outbreak of the flu epidemic on Apr. 24, which so far has officially infected 97 people and killed seven in Mexico, although some 1,300 patients are under observation.
Mexico s Secretary of Agriculture Alberto Cárdenas gave assurances that consumers can safely eat pork, which does not transmit the virus.
Nevertheless, China, Ukraine, Russia and other countries have banned imports of pork from Mexico and parts of the Uni…
Renu Kshetry
KATHMANDU, May 29 2009 (IPS) – At the annual military parade of the People s Liberation Army, Nepal s ex-guerrillas, curious bystanders saw a young woman clad in military fatigues kiss and cuddle a baby before handing her back to an older woman.
PLA soldiers Sujata (left) and Kabita …
Ebrima Sillah
NOUAKCHOTT, Aug 3 2009 (IPS) – Campaigners against HIV/AIDS in Mauritania face an uphill task to put their messages across, especially those that deal with safer sex and condom use. Campaigners have to cut corners in order to avoid angering the country s powerful religious clerics.
AIDS campaigner Correa Mint Sidi has been publicly condemned in her community for her work. Credit: Ebrima Sillah/IPS
With a pr…
Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 24 2009 (IPS) – Before, Zimbabwean families would take their ill relatives to rural clinics where medication was readily available and payment plans lenient. But now they are taking them there to die.
Millions of Zimbabweans already have no access to basic health care, and the health services have been in decline over a number of years. But the three-week strike by doctors has only magnified their dire circumstances. The situation has forced many families to make these impossible life and death decisions about their loved ones.
In Bulawayo desperate patients go to hospital only to be attended to by trainee nurses. Already life-saving machines have stopped working and the intensive care units have become nothing but empty shells.<…
NEW YORK, Oct 1 2009 (IPS) – Pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline hold the future welfare of poor people living with HIV/AIDS in their hands, argues the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, which is urging the companies to release their patents on specific HIV drugs into a collective pool that will increase access and affordability to treatment in developing countries.
Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF), has launched a new e-mail campaign to pressure pharmaceutical companies to share their patent rights of certain antiretroviral HIV/AIDS drugs.
Ideally, the patents held by different companies on specific HIV drugs would be made available to other companies for both production and development. The companies that own t…
José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Oct 17 2009 (IPS) – The Nicaraguan Red Cross is conducting an awareness-raising campaign to increase voluntary blood donations and meet hospital demand, in order to compensate for changes in blood collection practices and address a severe health crisis caused by outbreaks of dengue fever, pneumonia and H1N1 influenza.
According to the director of the Red Cross National Blood Centre, René Berríos, blood reserves began to wane in July following changes in blood collection practices. Under the old system, in place since the 1970s, patients undergoing surgery or in need of transfusions were required to have relatives donate a certain amount of blood.
The family members who donated blood would be given vouchers by the Red Cross, to be presented…
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 2009 (IPS) – As the World Food Security Summit got under way in Rome Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disclosed that nearly one in six U.S. households went hungry at some time during 2008, the highest level since it began monitoring food security levels in 1995.
Altogether, 14.6 percent of households, or some 49 million people, had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year , according to the report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2008 .
That marked a sharp increase from the 11.1 percent of households, or 36.2 million people, who found themselves in similar straits during 2007, according to the report whose lead author predicted that the percentage was likely to be higher in 2009 due…