Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 21 2010 (IPS) – Northern Thailand s Chiang Rai province has many charms to draw foreign visitors, from hilltribe communities dressed in colourful ethnic clothes, trips to gentle hills close to the Burmese and Lao borders, excursions to once infamous opium trails and a journey along the Mekong River.
But foreign guests from neighbouring countries like Vietnam to other nations like China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea are also being drawn to the province by a very different attraction its main provincial hospital.

These visitors, health workers for the most part, spend time at the Chiang Rai Prachanukroh Hospital to learn how Thai health workers have succeeded in reducing the spread of HIV among babies.

We sh…

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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MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 2013 (IPS) – A lot of attention goes to the U.S.-made weapons in the hands of criminal groups in this Latin American country. But there is little talk of another problem: the large number of light weapons in the hands of civilians.

The Mexican Constitution establishes the people’s right to own guns in their homes for their safety and self-defence , with the exception of high caliber weapons, while the 1972 Federal Law on Firearms and Explosives stipulates the requirements for enrollment in the Federal Arms Register.

Experts disagree on whether the current violent situation gripping society needs to be answered with a reform of the law, or simply application of its precepts.

Mexico has one of the most restrictive laws. I don’t think the la…

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2015 (IPS) – The threat is never over until we rebuild, Sierra Leone s President Ernest Bai Koroma stressed at an Ebola Recovery Conference Friday in New York.

On May 9, the west African country of Liberia was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) after 14 long months battling against the disease. However, two months later,  in only one week ending Jul. 5,  there were 30 confirmed Ebola cases reported in West Africa, three in Liberia, nine in Sierra Leone, and 18 in Guinea, according to the United Nations.

Koroma said that Ebola is a stubborn enemy which tends to keep showing its face.

The battle now is to get the few cases down to zero, and getting our countries and the whole world to stay at zero, Koroma asserted.<…