Claire Ngozo
LILONGWE, Jan 31 2011 (IPS) – As Malawi works on its second development blueprint, the Malawi Development and Growth Strategy (MDGS II), the country s women are hoping health and education will be prioritised and given proper attention in implementation.
Up to 27 percent of Malawi s women have never attended school compared to only 16 percent of males, according to Malawi s 2008 population and housing census. The United Nations says health indicators continue to be worse for women. The country s maternal mortality rate is at 807 deaths per 100,000 births among the worst in Africa.
The first MDGS, which has guided the country s development agenda since 2006 and expires this year, attempted to translate the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), includin…
CAPE TOWN, Apr 4 2011 – Since psychiatric care was decentralised last year in South Africa, patients have been moved from hospitals into community day hospitals that don t have the appropriate resources to deal with mental illnesses. As a result, many of society s most vulnerable have slipped through the cracks in the system and now walk the streets like invisible people.
One in six South Africans struggle with a mental disorder. Credit: Charlie Sperring
You see some walking the verge of highways, mut…
Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, May 3 2011 (IPS) – LGBT social networks and experts with Cuba s National Sex Education Centre (CENESEX) announced Tuesday that events surrounding the Day Against Homophobia will last a month this year in this Caribbean island nation.
There are places where gay pride day is celebrated; we are going to dedicate the entire month of May to the fight against homophobia, said sexologist Mariela Castro, director of CENESEX, a government agency.
Although our activities take place year-round, this is the time of greatest visibility, she said.
In a press conference held to present the planned events, Castro who happens to be the daughter of President Raúl Castro stressed the central role to be played by social networks of lesbian, gay, bisexual, …
Elizabeth Whitman
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 7 2011 (IPS) – Moves by developed nations such as the United States to tighten intellectual property laws are threatening to limit production and distribution of generic drugs, which experts say have been and will remain key in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and currently account for 80 percent of HIV/AIDS treatment.
These efforts are taking shape in two spheres. The first is in discussions on the outcome document that member states are expected to adopt by the end of this week s . The second is in bilateral trade negotiations between developed and developing nations.
Generic drugs are essential to treating HIV/AIDS on a global scale because of their low cost and because they drive down the cost of brand name drugs. Addi…
Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jul 22 2011 (IPS) – A young girl in Somalia sits chained to a tree. Women in the Ukraine wander aimlessly in the halls of a decrepit psychiatric hospital. Those are the startling images in a recent article by a global panel calling the world s attention to the extent and tragedy of hundreds of millions suffering from mental illnesses and who go untreated in the global south.
Grand Challenges Canada Thursday, announcing 20 million dollars in funding specifically for research proposals to tackle the issue of mental health in developing countries.
This is the first investment in response to the global panel s call for action, said Peter Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada.
Mental illness in low- and middle-income countries is…
Nasseem Ackburally
PORT LOUIS, Aug 25 2011 (IPS) – With drug trafficking rampant in the small Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, social workers and drug treatment centres are noting an increasing number of children and youth are now becoming addicted to drugs.
Social worker, Ally Lazer (centre), said he sees thousands of youth and young children becoming addicted to drugs. Credi…
DADAAB, Kenya, Oct 5 2011 (IPS) – When Aisha Diis* and her five children fled their home in Somalia seeking aid from the famine devastating the region, she could not have known the dangers of the journey, or even fathom that she would be raped along the way.
New arrivals at Dadaab wait for a medical check up. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
Diis left her village of Kismayu, southwest of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, for the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya’s North Eastern Province in April.
I was in a group o…
MINAMI-SANRIKU, Japan, Jan 23 2012 (IPS) – Yumi Goto, 60, lives with her husband in a temporary shelter on a windy hill that overlooks vast stretches of tsunami-devastated seacoast where her home was once located.
The huge earthquake and tsunami destroyed the life I had known till now. We are waiting to return to our former lives as soon as possible, Goto told IPS.
Over the past month, Goto’s family has resumed its traditional occupation, but they are nowhere near harvesting seaweed and oyster on the scale they did before the Mar. 11 catastrophe that devastated the Tohoku region covering the worst-affected prefectures of Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi.
A poll conducted by local officials in the region last week indicated that fewer than 20 percent of displaced resid…
Mar 2 2012 (IPS) – For over 90 years, a law in Argentina has allowed women who become pregnant as a result of rape to have an abortion. However, hospitals often refuse to carry out the procedure, instead referring the women to the justice system.
Argentine law penalises doctors who carry out abortions and the women who have them, with certain exceptions.
The 1921 criminal code states that abortion is not punishable when a doctor performs it because the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or sexual assault of a feeble-minded or demented woman.
Nevertheless, cases periodically crop up where sexually abused or raped girls, teenagers and women are for a decision about a procedure that in fact does not require autho…
Women affected by HIV in western Nepal stick together to survive. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS
RAKAM KARNALI, Western Nepal, Apr 11 2012 (IPS) – Life, already hard in Nepal’s remote western region, is getting worse thanks to HIV infection brought back by men who go to neighbouring India for seasonal work.
Worst hit are the region’s women, many of whom have had to sell off their land and livestock to get HIV treatment for their husbands and, in many cases, for themselves.
Rakam Karnali is typical of the small hamlets that dot the hilly mid-west and far-west regions that are home to mos…