Kester Kenn Klomegah interviews ALEXANDER ANTONENKO, Russian businessperson
MOSCOW, Apr 22 2009 (IPS) – At a glance, trade between Russia and African states is still at low levels, which experts attribute to an inadequate flow of information and lack of interaction.
Alexander Antonenko: Keen to collaborate with African enterprises Credit: Kester Klenn Klomegah/IPS
While Russia is undergoing an economic transformation and is predicted to become one of the …
Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, May 21 2009 (IPS) – The lives of hundreds of critically ill Gazans continue to be jeopardised by the power struggle between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, and political blackmail by Israel.
Mohammed Zibdeh, 12, who has cancer of the brain is waiting in Gaza city for a permit to travel to Israel for advanced treatment. He is dependent on a ventilator connected to his throat for survival.
Last year Mohammed was able to secure a permit to travel to an Israeli hospital where he received chemotherapy for his brain tumour, causing the tumour to shrink significantly.
However, a power struggle between Fatah and Hamas over the issuance of exit permits for patients, and Israel s reluctance to issue visas for Gazans on the basis of al…
Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN, Jul 22 2009 (IPS) – Failure to sustain funding for HIV/AIDS treatment programmes could lead to a rising number of deaths, particularly in Africa.
Shortfalls in funding for sites like this Senegalese health clinic will directly affect HIV disease and mortality rates. Credit: Dima Gavrysh/UNFPA
We need 17 to 18 billion dollars per yea…
Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Aug 15 2009 (IPS) – While the swine flu pandemic has not hit India too hard, it has sorely tested the country s ailing health delivery system and its plans to remedy the situation through private-public partnerships.
Much of the drama is playing out in the western Indian city of Pune where the death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl, on Aug. 3, following misdiagnosis at a private hospital where she was being treated, has led to charges in the media that the government was not doing enough contain the spread of the A(H1N1) virus.
Health authorities reacted to the death of the schoolgirl, Reeda Shaikh, by asking people who develop flu-like symptoms to report to designated government facilities for testing. That quickly resulted in panic and chaos wit…
VIENTIANE, Sep 21 2009 (IPS) – Ki is seven years old but looks more like three. His legs are bowed and skull misshapen. He looked at me with a blank stare. The health worker, Kheo, suggests rickets.
50 percent of Lao children are undersized Credit: Donna Kelly/IPS
Rickets and beri beri or thiamine (B1) deficiency are still far too common 19th century diseases in 21st century Laos.
The boy gets enough sun. It s the other nutrients, calcium, phosphorus and dietary oils that are lacking. He is the worst effected of 93 other kids in his v…
Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Nov 6 2009 (IPS) – Uganda is considering an anti-counterfeit bill which analysts say will impair the country s ability to import and export cheap but effective generic medicines. Activists fear that the bill, once enacted, will deny Ugandans access to safe, effective, quality and affordable generic medication which currently forms the bulk of Uganda s medicine imports.
The Counterfeit Goods Bill seeks to prohibit trade in goods that ostensibly infringe intellectual property rights. The bill, which was tabled by Uganda s trade ministry, will empower the commissioner of customs to seize suspected counterfeit goods.
The bill defines counterfeiting as manufacturing, producing, packaging, re-packaging, labelling or making, whether in Uganda or outsid…
Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 1 2009 (IPS) – Cuban biotechnology and pharmaceutical products are already among the country s major exports, and the industry is on course to continue developing while maintaining a firm focus on making a real difference to the health of all Cubans and of people in the numerous countries where Cuba provides medical assistance.
The existence of market forces is a reality that has to be reckoned with because of production costs, but health decisions cannot be governed by business considerations alone, said Agustín Lage, head of the Centre for Molecular Immunology (CIM), whose anti-cancer product Nimotuzumab is currently undergoing clinical trials in the United States.
Lage and other Cuban scientists presented the strategy and results obtaine…
Diana Mendoza interviews BIENVENIDO OPLAS, JR., small government advocate
MANILA, Jan 12 2010 (IPS) – As president of an independent think tank advocating minimal government, Bienvenido Oplas, Jr. believes that a society will be more peaceful and dynamic if people will assume more individual and voluntary responsibilities over their lives, their families and their communities.
This, according to Oplas, is the essence of ‘civil society and what the Minimal Government (MG) Thinkers, Inc. stands for.
People who are afraid of responsibilities are afraid of freedom itself, he says on his organisation s website. It is big and intrusive government that often rewards individual irresponsibility with subsidies and welfare.
Composed of a group of professionals and s…
William Fisher
NEW YORK, Mar 18 2010 (IPS) – Despite the fact that the United States spends more on maternal health than any other country in the world, deaths in childbirth among U.S. women are on the rise and already surpass the morbidity rates in most developed countries.
That s the principal conclusion reached in a new study by Amnesty International and data from the Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the U.N. s World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Amnesty study, entitled Deadly Delivery , reports that deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years from 6.6 per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006.
That would mean that, of the four million women who give…
A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Apr 22 2010 (IPS) – Human rights groups are urging the French government to adopt a law that would ban the financing of companies that produce cluster munitions, the deadly bombs that have killed or maimed thousands of civilians in the past 40 years.
A child victim of cluster munitions. Credit: A. Carle – Handicap International
France is among the 106 countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which will enter into force Aug. 1. The convention has been ratified by 30 sta…