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…

Kristin Palitza

CAPE TOWN , May 28 2010 (IPS) – Two small boys play quietly on a jungle gym, some distance away from other children. The six-year-old twins, who live at the Masigcine children s centre in Mfuleni township, 35 kilometres out of Cape Town, are severely traumatised from being orphaned at the age of one and have difficulty relating to their peers.

The number of orphans in South Africa has risen by 4.9 percent since 2005. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

We ha…

Ignatius Banda

BULAWAYO, Jul 26 2010 (IPS) – As African Union heads of state consider child and maternal health at the 2010 summit in Kampala, Uganda, the perennial question of user fees has reared its head in Zimbabwe. Fees for services are opening a growing gap between policy and implementation in maternal health care in the Southern African country.
Under government policy, care for pregnant women, new mothers and infants receive free care. But the country s rapid economic decline in the past decade has compelled health institutions to raise their own revenue to meet costs.

Women complain they are being denied health access because of failure to meet maternity and other hospital costs. New mother Thandeka Mbewe says she has been through it all, and is having second…