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Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Sep 10 2007 (IPS) – The International Finance Corporation (IFC) faces pointed criticism in coming days as an effort to lessen the damage wrought by large mining projects enters a new phase.

Mining pollution in the Philippines Credit: IUCN/CEESP

At issue are updates and enhancements to environmental, health, and social guidelines from the World Bank s private sector arm. Green groups and international charities say the proposed changes lack adequate standards in critical areas such as water contamination and the disposal of toxic …

Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 2007 (IPS) – When Dominique Strauss-Kahn takes over as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month, he will confront demands for the agency to more actively support health and education spending in the world s poorest countries.
Strauss-Kahn has pledged to revitalise the fund s development efforts as IMF managing director.

Africa Action and 100-plus other pressure groups, in a letter to the former socialist finance minister from France, demand decisive action within the first 100 days of his five-year term, due to start Nov. 1.

If Mr. Strauss-Khan is serious about IMF reform, these issues must be at the top of his agenda, said Marie Clarke Brill, interim executive director at Washington-based Africa Action.

Th…

Zofeen Ebrahim

HYDERABAD, India, Oct 31 2007 (IPS) – Sahinaz Khatun, who is preparing for her school finals in a village in West Bengal state, has for the last two years kept condoms (and birth control pills) at her home and thinks nothing of discussing subjects like menstruation hygiene and masturbation with other adolescents.
Khatun is among the 200 young people attending the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSH) demanding the right to sex education.

Talking about sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is not going to make us errant or licentious, she said, adding that there are people in her community who still feel this is not the right thing for a young unmarried woman to be doing. In some ways they are right, she says. …

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 30 2007 (IPS) – As the temperature drops and another cool season approaches, attention is turning to Vietnam s duck population, suspected to have become vulnerable to the deadly avian influenza (AI) virus.
The deaths of large numbers of free-range ducks through November appears to confirm the view that they are no more silent carriers of the H5N1 virus, as was thought to be the case after the current outbreak of AI began in the winter of 2003. In the Cao Bang province, in the northern mountains of the country, 60 ducks from a flock of 82, and 12 chickens from a flock of 17, died over a five-day period, this month.

Free range ducks didn t show signs of the virus unlike chickens, which were getting infected and dying, says Jeffery Gilb…

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 14 2008 (IPS) – The Brazilian Health Ministry is fighting a war on two fronts. It is taking measures to prevent an outbreak of sylvatic (or jungle) yellow fever while countering speculation in the press about an imminent epidemic of the disease. There have been no cases of urban yellow fever in the country since 1942.
In all, 24 cases of yellow fever have been reported to the ministry since December. Two have been confirmed by laboratory tests, and five have been ruled out, leaving 17 suspected cases, according to the Health Ministry.

In the first two weeks of 2008, three patients have died. One of the victims was confirmed to have contracted yellow fever, and the others are suspected to have died of the illness on the basis of c…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 20 2008 (IPS) – Shortly before he left office in January, Thailand s former public health minister, Mongkol Na Songkhla, offered a gift of hope to the country s poor. But that promise to supply cheaper, generic anti-cancer drugs -now hangs in the balance.
Mongkol s push to secure the generic drugs by issuing compulsory licenses (CLs) is being opposed his successor, Chiya Sasomsab, whose recent announcement to cancel a plan for affordable drugs to treat breast, lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancer has raised howls of protest from public health activists.

Some activists are even weighing the possibility of legal action against the new public health minister if he goes through with his plan. We have already begun discussing with lawyers a…

Dalia Acosta

PINAR DEL RÍO, Cuba, Mar 26 2008 (IPS) – Prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV, the AIDS virus, has become the centre of the lives of a small group of women in the province of Pinar del Río, in the west of Cuba.
Coordinated by the Women s Project in the Provincial Centre for Prevention of STIs and HIV/AIDS, they design educational strategies for villages and towns in the province, and advise the activists who promote responsible sexual behaviour among the local population.

Our work is to explain all the problems related to AIDS and STI prevention, and also how women can become health promoters in their homes and neighbourhoods, Martha Bermúdez, one of the 10 women making up the team of experts, tells IPS.

One of …

Newton Sibanda

LUSAKA, May 5 2008 (IPS) – Samson Mwenda, a farmer from Namwala in Zambia s Southern Province, recalls with bitterness the massive floods of the 2007/2008 rainy season and the harsh consequences they had for his life.
A prominent farmer who owns more than 3,000 head of cattle, Mwenda found that the floodwaters jeopardised his livelihood by making it impossible for him to get his livestock to market. The floods cut off access roads to the railway line and left him isolated from the rest of the country.

The local agent for Zambeef, one of largest agribusinesses in Zambia, also stopped buying cattle as the firm could not transport carcasses to market.

As a farmer I depend on cattle for my livelihood, but I couldn t take cattle to towns along the l…

Interview with HIV/AIDS activist Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 11 2008 (IPS) – As the United Nations winds down a major two-day conference to take stock of the global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the problem of persistent discrimination against people living with the virus has been high on the agenda.

Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga Credit: The Fig Tree

This is somewhat ironic, civil society groups say, in light of the fact that HIV-positive delegates wishing to attend the meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York were themselves forced to apply f…