Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Oct 5 2006 (IPS) – Rising tides of untreated sewage and plastic debris are seriously threatening marine life and habitat around the globe, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in a report Wednesday.
The number of ocean dead zones has grown from 150 in 2004 to about 200 today, said Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesperson.
These are becoming more common in developing countries, Nuttall told IPS from Nairobi, Kenya.
Dead zones can encompass areas of ocean 100,000 square kms in size where little can live because there is no oxygen left in the water. Nitrogen pollution, mainly from farm fertilisers and sewage, produces blooms of algae that absorb all of the oxygen in the water.
Growing global populations, mainly …
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Nov 12 2006 (IPS) – Ahead of World Diabetes Day, marked on Nov. 14, a leading British medical journal has issued a grim warning to Asian countries. Type-2 diabetes among the region s children has reached epidemic levels, says a paper published in The Lancet.
The onset of type-2 diabetes in younger age-groups is likely to result in major economic burdens for countries in Asia due to premature ill health and death, it says. People in Asia tend to develop diabetes with a lesser degree of obesity at younger age, suffer longer with complications of diabetes, and die sooner than people in other regions.
Type-2 diabetes is as troubling among the continent s adults, notes the paper, whose principle writer is Prof. Kun-Ho Yoon, a South Korean d…
Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Dec 7 2006 (IPS) – While world attention has focused on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, public health experts say that U.S. political interference and declining financial support for family planning, abortion and prevention of other sexually transmitted infections has contributed to shockingly high death and disability rates in developing countries.
Approximately 500,000 women die each year of causes related to pregnancy, abortion and childbirth, 99 percent of them in developing countries, according to the World Health Organisation.
These deaths would not be tolerated in other circumstances, says Dorothy Shaw, senior associate dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Countries are failing in their…
Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Jan 26 2007 (IPS) – Health NGOs and experts are accusing Russia s health and social development ministry of endangering the lives of tens of thousands of infected Russians by altering the list of anti-retroviral drugs the government plans to buy this year.
The activists and experts say government officials surreptitiously replaced cheaper, more effective drugs with more expensive, less effective medications. They allege that negligence and corruption might be behind the changes in the deal.
In a decree, the health ministry quietly replaced some of the so-called first-line drugs -for patients who have not been undergoing treatment for very long with third-line and fourth-line drugs designed for patients who have had the virus for years and …
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Baizhu ปรากฏตัวเ…
Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 20 2007 (IPS) – Mozambicans are bracing themselves for a cyclone that could spell further hardship for the 120,000 people devastated by floods over the past few weeks.
Not only more rains, but Cyclone Favio may hit the southern part of Mozambique this week. The weather indicates that the cyclone would most probably make landfall by February 22nd, Eunice Mucahe, programme director in Mozambique for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told IPS from the capital, Maputo.
Favio is currently over the Indian Ocean.
If the cyclone hits around Beira (a coastal city) then it could affect the people already affected by the floods, Richard Lee, spokesman for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), s…
José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Mar 29 2007 (IPS) – With the support of international cooperation, the Nicaraguan government is preparing to launch an all-out offensive against hunger, as part of an ambitious plan to help the rural poor achieve food sufficiency.
Of the country s 5.4 million people, 46 percent or 2.4 million were living below the official poverty line in 2005. Of that 2.5 million, 1.7 million lived in rural areas, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Orlando Núñez, director of the Zero Hunger Programme to be launched in May by the government of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, said the initial cost would be 50 million dollars.
The money will partly come from public funds that would have gone towards servicing the foreig…
Milagros Salazar
ALGAMARCA, Peru, May 4 2007 (IPS) – There is a cemetery at the foot of this hill full of gold and silver near the village of Algamarca in northwestern Peru an indication of the risks involved in informal mining, which uses highly toxic substances like cyanide and mercury.
A miner next to a cyanide pit. Credit: Milagros Salazar
Two hours away by car live the farmers of Chuquibamba, who are worried that toxic runoff from the small-scale mining operations is polluting the river that they depend on for water to grow their crops, such as paprika and …