Claudia Ciobanu
ROSIA MONTANA, Oct 4 2007 (IPS) – I never had money, I never wanted money, and I never will want money. I fear no one but God. I will not leave this place for as long as I live. Such statements, from a small yet determined core of inhabitants of Rosia Montana are indication that the Canadian corporation that wants to dig for gold here could get blocked by at least some people.
Rosia Montana Credit: Alburnus Maior
Rosia Montana is a commune with a population of 3,500 in the Transylvanian county Alba, roughly 600 km northwest of capital Bucharest. The largest gold de…
David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Oct 30 2007 (IPS) – The struggle to make medicines affordable to the world s poor, especially in Africa, is raging on at the highest levels. Last week the European Commission took a landmark decision on generic drugs and next week a high-level intergovernmental meeting will look at ways to prevent patents from blocking access to drugs.
In an agreement announced last week (on October 23), European Union (EU) governments were told that they are free to make available generic versions of patented drugs for export to poor countries which lack their own manufacturing facilities.
And next week, between November 5 and 10, a little-known group the intergovernmental working group (IGWG) on public health, innovation and intellectual property rights will m…
Steven Lang
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 29 2007 (IPS) – When the number of people reported with diarrhoea began to increase alarmingly in the town of Delmas in Mpumalanga Province towards the end of October, residents had flashbacks to an outbreak of diarrhoea and typhoid that took place in August and September, 2005. They feared the worst as the number of cases grew in the community of about 45,000 people 60 kilometres east of South Africa s financial centre, Johannesburg.
In 2005, five typhoid deaths were confirmed and seventeen people were hospitalised with the disease, normally caused by consuming water contaminated with the faeces or urine of infected people.
This year, soon after health officials became aware of the unusually high incidence of diarrhoea cases in Delmas, t…
Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 2008 (IPS) – How many Iraqi civilians have lost their lives as a result of gunshots and bombings since the U.S. military invaded that oil-rich Arab nation nearly five years ago?
The sole of a shoe lies abandoned along the so-called Highway of Death between between Kuwait and Basra. Credit: Christiaan Briggs
Credible estimates for the period March 2003 until June 2006 …
Raphaël Mvogo
KOUSSERI, Northern Cameroon, Feb 19 2008 (IPS) – The situation of thousands of Chadian refugees who have fled to the north Cameroonian town of Kousseri continues to be a source of concern to aid workers, although the picture is not uniformly dismal.
Chadian President Idriss Deby (right), the target of a coup attempt earlier this month. Credit: Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo
There are very few cases of malnutr…
José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Mar 20 2008 (IPS) – Thousands of people who eke out a living by selling recyclable trash scavenged from the municipal dump in the Nicaraguan capital are staging a protest over control of the city s waste, blocking access to the dump by the garbage trucks.
As a result, garbage has been piling up on the streets of Managua for almost three weeks now, putting the city s 1.6 million inhabitants at risk of disease outbreaks.
Some 1,600 waste pickers who comb through the garbage in the huge La Chureca city dump, on the northwest outskirts of Managua, for scrap material to sell began the protest on Mar. 1. They accuse local authorities of encouraging municipal employees to sell recyclable material themselves to formal sector companies that pay taxes…
Interview with Mark Heywood
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 30 2008 (IPS) – Results from trials in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda in 2006 showed that male circumcision reduced the transmission of HIV from women to men by up to 60 percent. On the basis of these results, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organisation have recommended that countries encourage men to be circumcised.
But, promoting this procedure is not without risk.
There is a danger that men may assume circumcision provides complete protection from HIV, and take no further steps to protect themselves. During the six to eight week healing period for the procedure, men are also more vulnerable to infection than before. In addition, many of the procedures are currently performed by tradi…
Am Johal
VANCOUVER, Jun 6 2008 (IPS) – The Canadian government has decided to appeal a British Columbia Supreme Court decision allowing North America s first supervised injection site, the facility known as Insite in Vancouver s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, to remain open without a federal government exemption.
The court case was initiated by the PHS Community Services Society, the operator of Insite with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, as a result of fears that the Conservative minority government would shut down the site by not signing an exemption under Canada s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act which would have allowed the facility to legally remain open.
Liz Evans, the executive director of PHS Community Services Society, told IPS, It is unclear on …
Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, Jul 9 2008 (IPS) – Crowded into a tiny strip of territory of 360 square kilometres, plagued by poverty, malnutrition and unemployment, Gaza s 1.5 million people face a demographic time bomb as the fragile infrastructure struggles to cope with a soaring birth rate.
Sawsun Duba supports seven children and a disabled husband. Credit: Mel Frykberg
We are looking at a political and socio-economic breakdown as financial deprivation and desperation, combined with political instability continue to…
Zofeen Ebrahim
MEXICO CITY, Aug 6 2008 (IPS) – Preaching abstinence to the young has not worked, nor has sex work been eradicated. Experts gathered here for the 17th International AIDS Conference say it is time to put public policies under the microscope and see why they have failed.
IranFreeTheDocs.org flyers distributed at the International AIDS Conference. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
Why do policies ostensibly put in place to protect sex workers end up penalis…