A contaminated stream in Kimicanga, a suburb of Kigali, Rwanda. What if human and other waste could be turned into an energy and revenue-producing bio-gas? Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Apr 30 2013 (IPS) – One, two or more of the 102 newly launched out-of-the box ideas to improve global health could be world-changing breakthroughs.
It might be someone s idea to create a test strip you touch with your tongue to see if you have a deadly disease. Or a mobile phone game to prevent HIV. Or the idea that untreated human waste from slums could be turned into marketable products.
Breakthroughs can t happen without a genius idea and the opportunity…
Youth in Rwanda fill out the MY World survey. Credit: Mark Darrough/Girl Hub Rwanda
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2013 (IPS) – Kanny Daylop, a legal practitioner and consultant from Nigeria, recalls her encounter with a woman named Joy.
“She was young, probably a teenager,” Daylop said.”It is a useful guide for us but the conversation has to be far more holistic and far more real.” — NFI’s Amitabh Behar
Contrary to her name, Joy’s life was filled with hardship. She became pregnant and dropped out of school. Her parents threw her out of their house. Since then, she has been working as a seamstress to earn money to take care of herself and her unborn child.…
The item below is a transcript of an editorial written in 1952 by T Keith Glennan, then Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission.
The editorial makes unmistakably clear that the birth of the nuclear electricity program was necessarily based on the production of plutonium for bombs. One key sentences states that:
there now exists a basis for the creation of semirisk industrial
nuclear- power enterprise while the military demand for plutonium
continues.
Semirisk meant subsidised.
Ironically, the editorial, toward its conclusion, says:
A multitude of other factors also must be considered, such as preferential position, adequate security measures, suitable safety precautions, public liability, and international relations. None of these probl…
ADDIS ABABA , Aug 16 2013 (IPS) – Foreign aid workers are increasingly becoming targets of corrupt officials within the Somali government and the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab.
“The government is laden with corrupt officials and allied clan militias that are determined to use them [aid workers] for their own interests,” political analyst Hassan Abukar told IPS. “Kidnapping foreign aid workers has become a way to extract cash from NGOs. is mistrustful of the NGOs for fear of losing control in the way aid is administered and [mistakenly believes] that these relief agencies are spying on the terror group.”
Abukar’s comments come as international and independent aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders (MSF), announced this wee…
Cameroon has shown only a moderate decline in new HIV infections, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS
YAOUNDÉ, Oct 29 2013 (IPS) – With a wide smile Beatrice M.* says that she lives by the motto “life is short and beautiful — live it to the full.” The 20-year-old, HIV-positive mother refuses to be defeated by her new circumstances.
Beatrice, a second year anthropology student at the University of Yaounde I, found out she was pregnant and HIV-positive when she was 18.
“When the doctor broke the news, I thought my life was over. But my gynaecologist put me on Zidolan [an anti-retroviral treatment] to prevent m…
Queuing for food at an NGO centre in Gaza. Credit: Erica Silverman/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 5 2013 (IPS) – As the international community fleshes out a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be unveiled next year, civil society activists and U.N. officials agree their success will hinge on policies that address the nexus of poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is making a strong push for a politically realistic set of SDGs, points out the latest grim statistics: more than one billion people are still living in extreme poverty and over 840 million are perilously hanging on the edge of starvation and hunger.”…
Florencio de Souza Bezerra points with his foot to a mound of dangerously inflammable charcoal dust on a roadside in Piquiá de Baixo. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
PIQUIÁ DE BAIXO, Brazil, Feb 10 2014 (IPS) – “My nephew was eight years old when he stepped in the ‘munha’ [charcoal dust] and burned his legs up to the knees,” said Angelita Alves de Oliveira from a corner of Brazil’s Amazonia that has become a deadly hazard for local people.
Treatment in faraway hospitals did not save the boy’s life, because “his blood had become toxic, the doctor said,” said Oliveira, 61, who has been working as a teacher for the last 30 years. “My sister was never the same…
Egyptian HCV carriers will soon have cost-effective alternatives to interferon therapy. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.
CAIRO, Apr 9 2014 (IPS) – Mohamed Ibrahim first learned he had hepatitis C when he tried to donate blood. Weeks later he received a letter from the blood clinic telling him he carried antibodies of the hepatitis C virus (HCV). He most likely acquired the disease from a blood transfusion he received during surgery when he was a child.
“I needed a lot of blood, and this was at a time before they screened it,” Ibrahim recalls.Even with new drugs showing promise in reversing cirrhosis, it may already be too late for late-stage HCV patients.
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Children in drought-struck Camotán, in Chiquimula province, Guatemala. Experts say climate change has reduced crop yields around the world. Credit:Danilo Valladares/IPS
WASHINGTON, May 23 2014 (IPS) – The U.S. government has pledged to reduce the number of chronically malnourished children around the world by at least two million over the next half decade, receiving an initial positive response from the development community.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the new programme Thursday at a major food security summit here. Government officials are also promising to maintain acute malnutrition rates at below 15 percent in areas affli…
This is part of a series of special stories on world population and challenges to the Sustainable Development Goals on the occasion of World Population Day on July 11.
Ángel and Guadalupe Villalobos work near the University of Costa Rica in San José. He is a hairdresser at a beauty salon and she distributes fruit for a small business run by this brother and sister. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS
SANTIAGO, Jul 10 2014 (IPS) – In Latin America, young people are the main link in the chain of poverty leading from one generation to the next. Civil society groups, academics and young people themselves say it is imperative to strengthen the connection between educati…