Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jan 9 2006 (IPS) – The French army administrated an illegal drug to its soldiers during the first Gulf War in 1991 without informing them of the risks, according to evidence presented at a judicial inquiry.
The drug, Modafinil, kept the soldiers awake for days, according to documents presented before a judicial inquiry into the Gulf War syndrome . The inquiry was launched by the public prosecution office in June 2002 to establish responsibility for illnesses suffered by French soldiers in Iraq.
The drug was administered to some 1,000 French soldiers who participated in the war against Iraq.
I and many comrades were given the drug every eight hours under orders from our commanders, Yannick Morvan, a veteran of the 1991 Iraq campaign told IPS…
Julio Godoy
PARIS, Feb 16 2006 (IPS) – The decision by French President Jacques Chirac to withdraw the asbestos-contaminated aircraft carrier Clemenceau from dismantling in India ends an embarrassing journey for the ship, and for the French government.
Chirac announced Wednesday afternoon that on the issue of dismantling ships, which poses questions on a global dimension related to protection of the environment, France must act in the most exemplary way.
Defence minister Michelle Alliot Marie said last week that France was dealing with the matter in an exemplary way in sending the ship to the Indian scrap yard Alang for dismantling.
Chirac s decision came only hours after the French state council, the highest judicial authority, ordered suspension of the Clem…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 18 2006 (IPS) – After years of oppression and secretive rule, Burma s generals appear to have come up against resistance from an unlikely opponent-avian flu virus.
This week s confirmation by the junta, that the South-east Asian nation is the latest to be hit by the deadly H5N1 virus, marked a dramatic departure from the insularity of a regime that has ruled the country with an iron grip since the 1962 military coup.
A request by the junta for assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is winning early praise from the U.N. agency. We are pleased that the government of Myanmar (the name given to Burma by the junta) reported the outbreak to FAO and has sought verification of the virus from labs outside the country, Laur…
Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Apr 19 2006 (IPS) – Properly iodised salt could have protected thousands following the Chernobyl disaster 20 years ago, says a Unicef report.
The failure to iodise salt made children in the region particularly vulnerable to thyroid cancer, the report says.
Households in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) comprising the former Soviet republics in the region have the world s lowest percentage of households consuming iodised salt, Angela Hawke from Unicef (United Nations Children s Fund) told IPS on phone from Geneva.
That compares with about 49 percent of households consuming iodised salt in South Asia, and 86 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, Hawke said.
A diet without iodised salt made people i…
Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, May 23 2006 (IPS) – Scientists who discovered a new variant of the hantavirus, in Guinea, have advised that measures be taken to avoid its possible transmission to humans. The virus is carried by a type of mouse, Hylomyscus simus, which is found in forested areas of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d Ivoire and Ghana.
We don t know at this point if this new virus, named the Sangassou hantavirus, is dangerous for humans, but we re in the process of investigating (the matter), said Dr Jan ter Meulen, head of the research team. The virus was named after the area of Guinea where it was discovered (the first hantavirus took its name from the Hantaan river area in South Korea, where it was identified).
While he has been quoted as saying that people…
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
FALLUJAH, Jun 25 2006 (IPS) – One and a half years after the November 2004 U.S. military assault on Fallujah, residents tell of ongoing suffering, lack of jobs, little reconstruction and continuing violence.
The U.S. military launched Operation Phantom Fury against the city of Fallujah-destroying an estimated 70 percent of the buildings, homes and shops, and killing between 4,000 and 6,000 people, according to the Fallujah-based non-governmental organisation the Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (SCHRD).
IPS found that the city remains under draconian biometric security, with retina scans, fingerprinting and X-raying required for anyone entering the city. Fallujah remains an island: not even the residents of the surrounding tow…
Alberto Cremonesi
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 9 2006 (IPS) – In the last two decades, the number of people suffering from diabetes has increased almost seven-fold, straining health care systems around the world and leaving millions of families to struggle with the emotional and financial drain of a chronic disease.
Fearing that the pandemic will only get worse, diabetes advocacy groups have joined together in a global campaign called Unite for Diabetes that is seeking a U.N. resolution to declare Nov. 14, 2007 World Diabetes Day .
The campaign aims to empower and educate the estimated 230 million people with diabetes about the importance of self-management of the disease to avoid further disability, and to urge governments to promote cost-effective strategies to both prevent …
Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Sep 11 2006 (IPS) – Serbian health authorities have finally confirmed what was long suspected the nation tops the list in Europe for lung cancers.
Lung cancer is caused in 80 percent of cases by heavy smoking, and usually proves fatal.
Some 30,000 new cases of cancer are discovered in Serbia each year, and of that number 5,200 are lung cancers, Serbian Health Minister Tomica Milosavljevic told reporters.
This has brought us to the top among European nations. We ll do everything in our power to define smoking as socially unacceptable and cut the number of smokers by half by 2015, he added.
Experts say this will be a daunting task in the nation of 7.5 million, where smoking is a long tradition and where one in two people …
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