Sonny Inbaraj
MEDAN, North Sumatra, Jun 22 2006 (IPS) – I really feel strongly that the issue of health and safety of reporters covering avian flu must be addressed by the management of news organizations, said Daenk Haryono of the North Sumatra-based Harian Global daily.
Many times I ve seen my colleagues go out to the field, not aware that they should be at least wearing face masks and gloves, he added. It seems like the editors just want our stories and couldn t give a damn about our safety,
Haryono has every reason to worry. Two reporters have so far been admitted to hospital, suspected to be suffering from avian influenza or bird flu. The latest victim from the popular Tempo daily was rushed to hospital last week when he developed high fever after covering the …
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Dec 6 2006 (IPS) – Hopes that the world will finally be able to immunise people against malaria received a shot in the arm, this week, as leading health experts unveiled the blueprint for a preventive vaccine in the Thai capital.
Yet, the architects of this new global strategy the Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap – launched Wednesday at the end of a three-day conference, warn against too much optimism.
Scientific caution was written all over Dr. Carlos Morel, director of the Rio de Janeiro-based Centre for Technological Development in Health. We know a vaccine is possible, but in reality we are still on the floor with blind eyes. This is a failure of science, he told IPS in an interview.
The challenge faced by the medical and sc…
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 2 2010 (IPS) – The United Nations stands accused of marginalising water and sanitation in its much-touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at improving the lives of billions of people in the developing world.
But will this shortcoming be rectified at the MDG summit of world leaders scheduled to take place in New York, September 20-22?
Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told IPS water has definitely not yet received proper attention in the draft outcome document to be adopted at the U.N. summit.
He pointed out that good management of water resources and provision of drinking water and sanitation are prerequisites for fulfilling all the different MDGs including the reduction of extrem…
Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, Sep 24 2010 (IPS) – The new government of Trinidad and Tobago wasted little time. In fact, Finance Minister Winston Dookeran took less than 30 seconds of a two-hour budget presentation to announce that the People s Partnership government, headed by the country s first female prime minister, Kamla Persad Bissessar, was scrapping the $66.6 million dollar smelter plant project involving investors from China and Brazil.
In addition to the health and environmental risk, there is also serious concern as to Alutrint s viability and the optimal use of our gas. This project shall cease and an alternative strategy will be put into place for the southwest peninsula, Dookeran said.
The proposed 125,000 metric-tonnes-per-year aluminum smelter complex…
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
Rukia (in the foreground) recovers after a successful fistula operation at Malalai Maternity Hospital in Kabul (August 2014). Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
KABUL, Sep 2 2014 (IPS) – The smell of faeces and urine isolates them completely. Their husbands abandon them and they become stigmatised forever” – Dr Pashtoon Kohistani barely needs two lines to sum up the drama of those women affected by obstetric fistula.
Alongside the health centre in Badakhshan – 290 km northeast of Kabul – Malalai Maternity Hospital is the only health centre in Afghanistan with a sect…
Jacqueline Mogeni is the CEO at Kenya’s Council of Governors and Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
Although child abuse and exploitation is prohibited by the Kenyan constitution, some children are still engaged in manual labour. XINHUA PHOTO: SAM NDIRANGU
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 12 2018 (IPS) – On 12 June every year is the . In the world s poorest countries, around one in four children are engaged in work that is potentially harmful to their health.
Su…
Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating. Credit: UN
ROME, Nov 19 2019 (IPS) – Mottled and reddish, the Lake Oku puddle frog has made its tragic debut on the , a rapidly expanding roll call of threatened species. It was once abundant in the Kilum-Ijim rainforest of Cameroon but has not been seen since 2010 and is now listed as critically endangered and pos…
Credit: Gopen Rai/NEPALI TIMES ARCHIVE
Apr 26 2020 (IPS) – The number of Nepalis suffering from mental health issues is increasing with the prolonged COVID-19 lockdown, and the lack of treatment and counselling means the country may be facing an epidemic of psychosocial disorders.
Mental health is a in Nepal because of social stigma, with showing that a shocking 37% of the population suffered from some form of mental health problem.
“During a time of a disaster or an epidemic, anxiety disorder, phobia, obsessive compulsive tendencies and depressive thought…
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.
Aug 25 2020 (IPS) – The . It’s tempting to assume that once the first vaccine is approved for human use, all the problems of this pandemic will be immediately solved. Unfortunately, that is not exactly the case.
Developing a new vaccine is only the first part of the complex journey that’s . Producing hundreds of millions of vaccines for the U.S. – and billions for the world as a whole – will be no small feat. There are many technical and economic challenges that will need to be overcome …