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…

Stanley Kwenda

HARARE, Oct 18 2010 (IPS) – Zimbabwe s debt burden of about 8.3 billion dollars, owed to internal and external institutions, is crowding out essential national budget items such as health and basic services, with detrimental effects for particularly women.

An activist s t-shirt displays the message of the ZIMCODD anti-debt campaign. Credit: Stanley Kwenda/IPS

Indications are that many Zimbabwean women opt to give birth at home, with some children …

Matthew O. Berger

WASHINGTON, Nov 19 2010 (IPS) – U.S. regulators are poised to decide as early as next week whether to approve a genetically modified salmon for human consumption.
It would be the first GM animal approved for human consumption, and there are fears that the review process is overlooking key ripple effects of approving the fish.

These ripple effects are both positive, such as public health benefits, and negative, such as environmental degradation, say researchers.

The debate over the salmon, which would be raised on fish farms and which contains inserted genes from two other species of fish that allow it to grow faster and require less feed than conventional salmon, has focused on whether the fish would pose a hazard to human health or, were it …

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.

…

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…