Mohammed Omer

JABALYIA, Gaza, Mar 5 2008 (IPS) – An ambulance races through Jabalyia refugee camp to pick up the critically injured and the body parts strewn across the street. A normal day #39s job these days.

Another funeral procession in Gaza Credit: Mohammed Omer

Families crouch in makeshift shelters around handheld radios, listening out for some word that their agony will end. There is no electricity, clean water is at a premium.

No sign yet of an end to the #39hot winter #39 that Israel has determined for Gaza residents. Israel is determined to f…

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 17 2008 (IPS) – Brazilians, especially women, are among the global leaders in taking meticulous care of their bodies and exhibiting them to advantage. This is a significant factor in climbing social and economic ladders, establishing identities and competing successfully in markets, from employment to romance.
The result is explosive growth in the beauty industry, frenzied consumption of cosmetics and slimming products, enthusiasm for exercise programmes and widespread use of plastic surgery, even among teenagers.

This cult of physical perfection is a central research theme for anthropologist Mirian Goldenberg, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who has just launched a book, O corpo como capital (The Body as a Capi…

Stephanie Nieuwoudt

CAPE TOWN, May 29 2008 (IPS) – A planned lodge development at the settlement of Molapo in Botswana s Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) has become a source of controversy.
Tourists who frequent the 40-room lodge will enjoy the sights of the Kalahari from the vantage of luxury accommodation. The outlook for indigenous Bushmen from the reserve is less positive, however.

Botswana s government is denying the Bushmen also referred to as the San or Basarwa the right to re-open a borehole in the vicinity of the development, a move rights activists allege is part of a sustained campaign to keep Bushmen out of their ancestral land in the CKGR to allow for mining. Large-scale relocations of the Bushmen took place in 1997, 2002 and 2005 according to Surviva…

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 …