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…

Poor hygiene practices

“Cholera in this region is not only a water scarcity problem, it also aggravated by the poor hygienic practices that are deeply rooted in people’s culture. Water is scarce and considered as a very precious commodity, but handling it is quite unhygienic,” Félicité Tchibindat, the country representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Cameroon, tells IPS.

Cultural practices are still primitive in most villages and urban areas.

Northerners have a culture where people publicly share water jars, from which everyone drinks from.

“These practices and many others make them vulnerable to water vector diseases. [It is the] reason why cholera can easily spread to other communities. Cholera outbreaks are a result of …

Joseph Chamie is a former director of the United Nations Population Division

Contraceptives on sale at a store in Sanaa, Yemen. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

NEW YORK, Oct 1 2014 (IPS) – For most of human history, reproductive rights essentially meant men and women accepting the number, timing and spacing of their children, as well as possible childlessness. All this changed radically in the second half of the 20th century with the introduction of new medical technologies aimed at both preventing and assisting human reproduction.

Those technologies ushered in historic changes in reproductive rights and behaviour that continue to reverberate around the world, g…

Rashmi Chopra is a fellow in the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

Monica Wambui, 37, who is deaf, receives HIV/AIDS information in sign language. Wambui was among more than 40 people with disabilities who attended a workshop organised by the USAID-funded APHIAplus Nuru ya Bonde project in Nakuru, Kenya. Credit: USAID/George Obanyi

NEW YORK, Nov 28 2014 (IPS) – Jane is a young Zambian mother with a physical disability in Lusaka, who uses a wheelchair to get around. She does not let clinics without ramps or without wheelchair accessible toilets and equipment stop her from claiming her right to health care, including HIV prevention services.