Claudia Ciobanu

BUCHAREST, Jul 27 2007 (IPS) – The release of six Bulgarian medics detained in Libya for eight years seems to have led to a sudden normalisation of ties between Libya and the European Union.
In 1999, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were imprisoned in Libya for allegedly intentionally infecting 426 infants with HIV. The medics had been working since 1998 in a hospital in Benghazi province. Almost 50 of those children have died.

On May 6, 2004, the Criminal Court in Benghazi sentenced the five Bulgarians and the Palestinian to death by firing squad.

The medics denied having purposefully infected the infants, and several specialist reports including one published in 2006 by renowned magazine Nature confirmed their claim that the inf…

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Aug 24 2007 (IPS) – There are not enough doctors in Portugal s public health system, because too many have left to enter the private sector. This has forced socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates administration to seek rapid and drastic solutions, one of which is to attract doctors from the developing world.
One hundred Uruguayan doctors will travel to Portugal in the next few months to fill vacancies in the National Health Service (SNS), following an agreement reached between Lisbon and Montevideo, Health Minister Antonio Correia de Campos announced early this month.

The agreement, which emerged from meetings of the Iberoamerican health ministers, will be signed in late September during an official visit to Portugal by Uruguay s left-wing P…

Francis Kokutse

ACCRA, Sep 26 2007 (IPS) – We prayed to God to open the heavens, but this is not what we expected, says Peter Nayoon, a farmer from Gushiegu in the north of Ghana, one of several African countries blighted by floods over recent weeks. I am finished, he adds, pointing dejectedly towards the area that used to be his yam farm. Who would give me money to start a new life?
A very dry spell preceding the floods had affected the whole country, almost leading to the closure of the hydroelectric dam at Akosombo in the south-east; this facility is fed from the north by the Volta River.

Then, in late August, came the rains, deluging the Northern region and the Upper East and Upper West regions, also in the north.

The downpours obliged families which had …

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2007 (IPS) – The world #39s sanitation crisis, caused primarily by the lack of toilet facilities for over 2.6 billion people, is an insult to humanity , says the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
Every 20 minutes we spend sitting in our offices, organising meetings, passing resolutions and discussing policies, a child dies as a direct result of poor sanitation, complained the Council #39s executive director Jon Lane.

According to the U.N. Children #39s Fund (UNICEF), an average of about 1.5 million children die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.

And so, on Wednesday, the United Nations formally launched the International Year of Sanitation 2008 (IYS), a theme set by the …

Interview with Eduardo Praselj, Chairman of the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 26 2007 (IPS) – We have provided financial support to 179 South-South cooperation projects since 1987 in the fields of food and agriculture, trade, technology, energy, raw materials, technical cooperation, finance, industrialisation, and health, Eduardo Praselj, chairman of the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund (PGTF), told IPS.
The PGTF was established by the General Assembly in 1983 to support activities in economic and technical cooperation among developing countries (ECDC/TCDC). PGTF-funded projects are designed to have a maximum multiplier effect and in the case of regional projects, serve as pilot projects for other regions.

The Trust Fund is named after the late Manuel Perez-G…

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 4 2008 (IPS) – An innovative mental health plan developed in a town in the Argentine province of La Pampa has reduced to a minimum relapses among patients discharged from hospital, while at the same time providing new and valued employment for jobless people living on state subsidies.
The Mental Health Home Companionship Programme began 14 years ago as an initiative of the professional team serving acute psychiatric patients at the Gobernador Centeno Hospital in General Pico, a town of 60,000 in the north of La Pampa, 600 kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires.

We had 16 beds, for acute psychiatric patients only, within the general hospital, social worker Cristina Proia told IPS.

We saw that they were staying in hospital for t…

Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY, Apr 13 2008 (IPS) – While millions of children s lives have been saved as a result of a successful worldwide campaign to boost vaccination programmes, governments across the world are failing in following through on their commitments to health aid and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Wealthy countries such as the G8 members continue to content themselves with largely symbolic gestures. We have to make sure that the pledge made by governments (on MDGs)is followed, eminent medical scientist Gustav Nossal told IPS.

Global resources for fighting AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria now total eight billion US dollars a year. The amount should be several times more than this. After all, we are only talking about the price of a couple of jet fighter…

Farid Ahmed

DHAKA, May 24 2008 (IPS) – Authorities here have stepped up surveillance against avian influenza after the case of a 16-month-old boy, who took ill in January, was diagnosed as one of infection with the deadly H5N1 virus.

Culling operations gainst bird flu outside Dhaka. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

Bangladesh become the 15th country to report a case of human infection after the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO), citing results from laboratories at the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, confirmed the in…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2008 (IPS) – The devastating impact of rising food prices is expected to hit most of the world s 2.2 billion children the hardest particularly in developing nations.
They are likely to be its main victims, says Kul Gautam, a former deputy executive director of the U.N. children s agency UNICEF. Remember, 80 percent of the human brain is formed in the first 18 months of a child s life.

And whether a child will grow to live up to his or her full human potential, or the child will be condemned to be a slow learner and poor achiever in life, is largely determined in the first few years of a child s pre-school life.

The damage caused by malnutrition, infection and poor child care in early childhood often lasts for the whole lif…

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Aug 27 2008 (IPS) – From the party platform ratified by delegates between speeches Monday, to primetime, headlining speeches by two heavy hitters in the election Sen. Hillary Clinton and first-lady hopeful Michelle Obama the initial two days of the Democratic National Convention were dominated by women.

Michelle Obama addresses delegates at the Democratic National Convention, which ends on Aug. 28. Credit: rklau…