Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2008 (IPS) – Although the global percentage of people living with HIV has stabilised since 2000, the overall number of people living with HIV has increased due to new infections each year and wider access to antiretroviral therapy, says the new UNAIDS report on the epidemic.
Peter Piot, the head of UNAIDS, said Tuesday that in overall terms, there has been enormous progress with real results.

The 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic estimates 33 million people were living with HIV worldwide in 2007, including 2.7 million new infections, down from 3.0 million, and 2.0 million deaths that are down from 2.2 million in 2005.

However, the total number of HIV-infected children is up from 1.6 million in 2001 to 2.0 million …

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Sep 9 2008 (IPS) – Even before the ravages caused by Hurricane Gustav in the western part of Cuba have been fully assessed, Hurricane Ike made landfall on the northeastern shore of the island on Sunday, swept westwards out to sea on Monday, and is showing signs of powering up before slamming Cuban territory again.
Water temperatures (in the Caribbean) have reached 31 or 32 degrees, and they are fuelling this cyclone. Its intensity has diminished in the last few hours, but it will get stronger again. As it goes farther out to sea, it may become more organised and more intense, said Cuban meteorologist José Rubiera.

The head of the Meteorology Institute s National Weather Forecast Centre, Rubiera confirmed that the eye of the cyclone had moved bac…

Mirela Xanthaki

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 3 2008 (IPS) – With a million people dying by suicide every year and two suicide deaths per minute, it remains a major preventable cause of death worldwide, mental health experts say.
It is tragic that in a world where more people kill themselves each year than die in all wars, terrorist attacks and homicides, there is so little attention paid to suicide prevention and only a dozen countries have a national strategy for suicide prevention, Brian Mishara, president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), told IPS.

Former Soviet States such as Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus and the Russian Federation have the highest suicide rates per capita. However, countries in Asia account for 60 percent of suicides worldwide…

Diego Cevallos* – Tierramérica

MEXICO CITY, Dec 26 2008 (IPS) – The Mexican mining company Autlán maintains that there is no evidence that manganese causes any harm to human health. But in the central state of Hidalgo, where the metal is mined, adults shake as if they suffered from Parkinson s disease and children s mental development lags behind normal.

Autlán mining operations in the mountains of Hidalgo. Credit: Courtesy of INSP

The company takes a sceptical position (about studies that show the effe…

Marwaan Macan Markar interviews MICHEL SIDIBE, chief of UNAIDS

BANGKOK, Mar 24 2009 (IPS) – The global financial crisis has created a space for a vigorous debate on the life-prolonging drugs needed for people living with HIV, says Michel Sidibe, the new head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Michel Sidibe Credit: UNAIDS

The global financial crisis has created a space for a vigorous debate on the life-prolonging drugs needed for people living with HIV, says Michel Sidibe, the new head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Against such a prospect, however, is the i…

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2009 (IPS) – About one million people die every year from malaria, including a child every 30 seconds. Half a billion people are infected annually. Africa alone, according to studies, loses 12 billion dollars in productivity and to treating the disease. And almost all of it is easily preventable.
But resources have been scarce and attention to the killer mosquito-borne disease relatively low, in large part because the disease burden rests almost exclusively in the poorest countries.

On the eve of World Malaria Day on Apr. 25, leaders of international agencies, activists, and U.S. President Barack Obama, among a host of others, are set on changing this situation.

The United States stands with our global partners and people around …

Shari Nijman interviews JUNE OSCAR, CEO of Marninwarntikura Fitzroy Women’s Resource Centre

UNITED NATIONS, May 22 2009 (IPS) – In 2007, a group of aboriginal women from Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia decided that the only thing that could save their community from going under was to impose a complete ban on the sales of takeaway alcohol.

June Oscar Credit: Shari Nijman/IPS

In the previous year, the community had witnessed 13 suicides and many alcohol-related deaths, resulting into a funeral every week. By pushing for a drinking ban, the women of Fitzroy Crossing hoped that the …

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 16 2009 (IPS) – As the annual scrimmage for coveted seats in India s engineering and medical colleges gets underway, what many students dread is the sadistic ritual of ragging or hazing that they expect to undergo at the hands of their seniors.
I know that the Supreme Court has passed directions ordering the government to take steps to curb ragging but I doubt they can be enforced, says prospective engineering student Prahlad Goyal, who hopes to enter one of the several Indian Institutes of Technology.

On May 7 moved by the death of Aman Satya Kachroo, a first-year student at a medical college in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh state following a brutal beating by his seniors the apex court issued orders to all provincial governmen…

Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Jul 27 2009 (IPS) – What happened to me shattered my dreams, my hopes I wanted to be someone who worked outside the home but I spend all day at home looking after the baby I can t even sleep and I feel very unsafe, many of my days are a nightmare, it s very hard to carry on and I feel very sad and very tired, said M , who was raped at age 17 by a relative.
Even though she was a victim of incest and rape, M , who spoke with representatives of Amnesty International on their visit to Nicaragua last week, was unable to abort the pregnancy because of the ban on therapeutic abortion in place in this Central American country, one of the poorest in the hemisphere, since 2008.

The Amnesty report issued on Monday, The total abortion ban in Nicaragua: W…

Thalif Deen interviews Anders Berntell, Executive Director of the Stockholm International Water Institute*

STOCKHOLM, Aug 18 2009 (IPS) – We can provide astronauts with a safe supply of drinking water when they travel to the moon, but we cannot provide the same service to slum dwellers in Kibera, Nairobi or Dharavi, Mumbai, Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told a gathering of over 2,400 participants at the annual World Water Week concluding Friday.

Anders Berntell Credit: Stockholm…