Naimul Haq*
DHAKA, Dec 31 2010 (IPS) – Poverty remains one of the problems of Bangladesh, but it has made, and continues to make, key progress when it comes to preventing deaths among its children.
Every child counts in immunisation, officials say. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
In fact, Bangladesh has become quite a success in lowering its child mortality rate that it is now among the few nations that are poised to reduce this rate by two-thirds, which is the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG). And that, say experts, is due…
QUITO, Feb 16 2011 (IPS) – The plaintiffs in the case against Chevron tried in Ecuador, who won a historic 9.5 billion dollar verdict after a nearly 18-year struggle over environmental and health damages caused in a quarter-century of oil operations in the Amazon jungle, are not disheartened by the road still ahead.
Plaintiffs belonging to the Asamblea de Afectados por la Texaco at a press conference. Credit: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS
Chevron announced t…
TOKYO, Mar 16 2011 – Workers battling to contain the crisis at Japan s quake- stricken Fukushima nuclear plant were briefly moved to a bunker because of a rise in radiation levels, local media have reported.
The level of radiation at the plant surged to 1,000 millisieverts early on Wednesday before coming down to 800- 600 millisieverts.
Harry Fawcett, Al Jazeera s correspondent in Japan, said the workers struggling to avert a nuclear meltdown were allowed to return to the facility later.
The 70 workers who were taken into that protective bunker were able to go back and restart operations crucial to keeping this entire plant cool, he said.
They have been pumping sea water into the reactors; the ones that were active before the earthquake and the ones which …
Kara Santos
MANILA, Apr 14 2011 (IPS) – At the tender age of 10, Rodel Morozco was working in a goldmine and crawling inside tunnels, until one day he fell 200 feet underground because his father had blasted the tunnel with dynamite.
A child works by a mine in the Philippines. Credit:
I had to run and get out but it was too dark, said Morozco, who worked the mines in Camarines Norte province in Bicol, one of the Philippines poorest regions. I felt so miserable, and then I realised that I did not like what I was doing. I just wanted to go back to school.
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Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, May 13 2011 (IPS) – The world is experiencing a change in the geographic distribution of diseases. Traditionally, infectious diseases, which claim the lives of so many children, affected poor countries, and noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, cardiac ailments and cancer plagued rich countries.
But the latest statistics released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Friday show that the income level of nations is no longer so important, and that all countries now face the burden of both kinds of diseases.
Up to now, noncommunicable diseases tended to be identified as the ills of opulence, limited to high-income countries, WHO director of Health Statistics and Informatics Ties Boerma told IPS.
However, due to changes caused by the …
Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 15 2011 (IPS) – Slackening awareness and deep-rooted social discrimination are behind the latest figures that show Japan with a record number of HIV-positive and AIDS patients, officials and experts say.
Yorimasa Nagai, director of the Japan Foundation for AIDS Prevention, said the climbing figures are a wake-up call for the government, which has announced it is slashing budgets for organisations working on the issue.
Last month, the Health and Welfare Ministry reported 1,075 new HIV-positive cases for 2010, an increase of 54 from 2009. The number of new patients with full-blown AIDS also rose to an unprecedented 469, with the highest numbers recorded among homosexuals.
The upward trend in HIV-positive and AIDS cases has been obse…
Stephen Leahy
VIENNA, Jun 27 2011 (IPS) – Like our cave-dwelling ancestors of 200,000 years ago, nearly three billion people still use fire for cooking and heating. Of those, some 1.5 billion people have no access to electricity. For a billion more, their only access is to sporadic and unreliable electricity networks.
Now an is being launched by the United Nations to bring electricity to everyone on the planet by 2030.
Energy is the issue for the next decade, said Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the (UNIDO).
Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is impossible without energy, Yumkella said at the opening of the last week.
The MDGs include reducing by half the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015, and ensuring environmenta…
Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO, Aug 2 2011 (IPS) – Tuberculosis remains a leading cause of death in Mali despite the availability of free treatment. The resurgence of the illness, linked to poverty and HIV infection, could be reduced by changing behaviour, doctors say.
I know people who have died of tuberculosis, Ramata Guindo told IPS.
In this market, a vendor of kitchen utensils died of it last year. He didn t go to a health centre in time. When they discovered what was wrong with him, it was too late, says the vegetable vendor at Bamako s Lafiabougou market.
This teeming market of hastily-constructed wooden sheds perfectly illustrates the overcrowding that supports the transmission of contagious diseases like TB. Between the merchants stalls, shoppers trample …
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 8 2011 (IPS) – While the tendency in the industrialised world in the wake of the Mar. 11 nuclear meltdown in Japan is to abandon plans for further nuclear energy development, in Argentina the capacity of existing plants is being strengthened, and new reactors are being built.
Germany announced that it would start its nuclear power programme; Switzerland will make a ban on nuclear reactors permanent; and more than 94 percent of voters in a referendum in Italy rejected the government s plans to restart the nuclear programme abandoned in the late 1980s.
But that is far from happening in Argentina. The government of Cristina Fernández signed contracts in late August to extend the useful life of one of the country s two nuclear plants, a…
Rosemary D’Amour
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 2011 (IPS) – Dr. Rick Steketee, science director at the Malaria Control Partnership at PATH, a leading nonprofit organisation dedicated to public health in the Pacific northwest city of Seattle, isn t alone when he says that elimination of the infectious disease is a possibility.
In the so-called malaria belt centred around the Equator, the disease is often transmitted year-round. Credit: U.S. CDC