Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Dec 13 2011 (IPS) – At the clinic we were attended to by a woman who criticised us and only talked to us about religious questions, says Carlos Valdez of Proyecto Unidos, an NGO in Guatemala that fights for access to HIV/AIDS prevention services by homosexuals and sex workers.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people face discrimination in health centres due to homophobia and transphobia, and do not receive treatment tailored to our needs. That s why we still represent the largest number of cases of HIV, Valdez told IPS.

Among men who have sex with men in the country, 7.6 percent were HIV-positive in 2010, according to the study Intensificación de las acciones de prevención y atención integral en VIH y sida en grupos vulnerab…

MEXICO CITY, Feb 10 2012 (IPS) – Vaccines against drug addiction appear to be a better strategy than the repressive worldwide war on drugs , but first they must overcome resistance from pharmaceutical laboratories and secure financial backing, scientists say.
Experimental trials against cocaine and heroin addiction are under way in Mexico and the United States, but two or three more years of work are needed to prove that the treatment is viable. Ethical aspects must also be resolved, such as compulsory medication for addicts and permission for use in children.

Different delivery methods need to be designed. The pleasurable effect of drugs needs to be eliminated, which is feasible. But it will have to start being done in under-age children, and that raises a number of legal…

Kristin Palitza

ABIDJAN , Mar 15 2012 (IPS) – I would like to use contraception, but my husband is against it, says Bintou Moussa*. The 32-year-old mother has just given birth to her sixth child at the Abobo General Hospital in Cote d Ivoire s commercial capital Abidjan.

A health worker explains the sexual transmission of infections at the family planning clinic in Yopougon. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

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WASHINGTON, Apr 26 2012 (IPS) – Although coming off a rocky year in 2011, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is not in crisis , according to the organisation s deputy general manager, Debrework Zewdie.
At a roundtable organised on Wednesday by the Council on Foreign Relations here, Zewdie stated that after being forced to weather a scandal last year and the ongoing international economic downturn, the is once again receiving substantial commitments from bilateral donors.

A day after the news was officially disclosed to the Global Fund s governing board, Zewdie announced new or renewed multi-year funding promises from Germany, Japan, Spain and the UK. The Global Fund s most significant donor, the United States, has maintained its backing throughout the …

TORONTO, May 29 2012 (IPS) – Canada s West Coast First Nations are feeling overwhelmed by crises affecting their land rights, economic well-being and health, prompting warnings in one territorial dispute with a local energy company that the country risks a degeneration of Aboriginal-federal government relations to a level unseen in two decades.

Enbridge Inc. s controversial Northern Gateway Pipelines, a project which will span more than 1,100 km and transport petroleum from Edmonton, Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia on the Pacific coastline, reached a crescendo this month in a so-called Freedom Train made up of First Nations people traveling from their homes in northern B.C. to the oil and gas firm s annual general meeting in Toronto.

As of now, the Yinka Dene Allian…

Tembari Children’s Care is providing protection, food and education to orphans and abandoned children in Port Moresby. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

PORT MORESBY, Jul 17 2012 (IPS) – In an informal settlement of 10,000 people on the outskirts of Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, Tembari Children’s Care – a new grassroots initiative – is providing protection, food and education to orphans and abandoned children who would otherwise join the high numbers of child labourers in this Melanesian country.

Hayward Sagembo and his wife, Penny, who live in Nine Mile Settlement, became deeply conc…

BANGKOK, Sep 4 2012 (IPS) – When Philippines President Benigno Aquino III delivered his annual state of the union address in July, he appealed to the country’s lawmakers to break a  deadlock on progressive birth control laws in this predominantly Catholic nation.

An estimated 15 Filipina women currently die from pregnancy-related complications every day up from a daily average of 11 a decade ago – and many of these are teenagers from among the urban and rural poor, according to a government survey.

In the decade after the law was originally proposed, unintended pregnancies have risen by 54 percent, according to the government’s ‘Family Health Survey-2011.’  The bill seeks to addresses this situation by offering contraceptive options, reproductive health ca…

Women demand their rights outside the government secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram, India. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 19 2012 (IPS) – As gender-based violence across India becomes more frequent, and more savage, increasing numbers of women are speaking out against the cruelty.

On Oct. 6, a 14-year-old girl from the Sacha Khera village in the Jind district of northern India’s Haryana state set herself on fire after a brutal gang rape.

In her statement to the police, the girl claimed that two male youngsters dragged her into a house, while the sister-in-law of one of the culprits stood guard on the terrace.

The teenage…

A new vaccine will immunise five million Pakistani children annually against pneumonia. Credit: Adil Siddiqi

KARACHI, Nov 22 2012 (IPS) – Medical practitioners at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), a leading government-run children’s hospital in Karachi, hope that this will be the last winter they have to treat a stream of children suffering from pneumonia.

The disease is one of the of under-five children in the country, accounting for about 19 percent of child mortality.

Last month Pakistan became the first country in South Asia to introduce a free pneumonia vaccine, to immunise five million children against the dead…