Adrianne Appel
BOSTON, Jun 5 2009 (IPS) – U.S. taxpayers have given 50 billion to rescue General Motors, but the company says it should not have to pay a penny to people harmed by known defects in its vehicles.
Despite the billions, the company is in collapse and filed for bankruptcy Jun. 1 to re-work debts and restructure its operations. It will dump the Hummer and Saturn models, lay off 21,000 workers, shutter 3,000 dealerships and start anew as a largely U.S.-owned company with a green edge.
As it negotiates bankruptcy in a New York court, the company is arguing that it should be absolved from paying out money to people who are hurt as a result of known problems in its cars already on the road. Consumer groups are fighting against the plan, and a similar deal alrea…
DAKAR, Jun 30 2009 (IPS) – In Senegal s southern region, 58 percent of deliveries take place at home without any medical assistance, according to state reproductive health officials in Kolda, a town 425 km from the capital, Dakar. Women in the region suffer from exceptionally high rates of fistula.
There are just seven doctors for every 100,000 people in Senegal; just one midwife for every 400,000 pe…
Gail Jennings
CAPE TOWN, Aug 5 2009 (IPS) – Every weekday morning, a stylish procession leaves the offices of MaAfrika Tikkun NGO in Delft, Cape Town; bumps and jolts through the gravel entry gates; then hits the tar and scatters into every corner of the township
Bicycles are enabling carers to see more patients. And have more fun. Credit: Gail Jennings/IPS
Those people, they are mos kwaai jong (now very cool) they drive a bicycle now says an envious onlooker.
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Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Aug 28 2009 (IPS) – Some 30 members of the Chilean Health Ministry s Consultative Council on Gender and Women s Health have asked the government to enforce a directive ordering humane and compassionate treatment for women who have had an abortion.
Three representatives of the Consultative Council delivered a letter to Health Minister Álvaro Erazo Wednesday, demanding that he enforce his own instructions, sent Apr. 24 to the heads of every public health service in the country.
This is a protest against the disclosure of the identities of young women who had abortions and were admitted to public hospitals, Adriana Gómez, of the Latin American and Caribbean Women s Health Network, told IPS. She handed over the letter along with Rosa Ferrada, …
MANILA, Oct 28 2009 (IPS) – Although the enacting in August of the Magna Carta of Women (MCW) a major law aiming to end discrimination against women across the archipelago was well-received here, there remain concerns about whether the legislation will be fully implemented.
Advocates hope that women will benefit fully from the new law. Credit: Stephen de Tarczynski/IPS
Mary Joan Guan, executive director of the Centre for Women s Research, a Manila-based advocacy and training organis…
Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 2009 (IPS) – A record 106 million infants were vaccinated in 2008 the highest rate of immunisation ever according to a report released Wednesday in Washington, but NGOs are calling for an increase in funding to fill the gap affecting the world s poorest nations and communities.
The State of the World s Vaccines and Immunisation report, released by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the U.N. children s agency UNICEF and the World Bank, calls attention to the huge improvements made in childhood immunisation rates and in prevention of communicable diseases in the world s most vulnerable communities.
For the first time in documented history, the number of children dying each year has dropped below 10 million.
Immunisation is a ma…
Paul Virgo
ROME, Jan 22 2010 (IPS) – German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was way off the mark when he wrote the famous line what does not destroy me, makes me stronger at least when it comes to hunger.
Every six seconds a child is killed by hunger or a related cause on a planet where over one billion people do not have enough to eat despite adequate supplies, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Rather than being fortified, the survivors of this scourge carry its debilitating effects with them for the rest of their lives, and often pass them on to future generations too.
This is because hunger is not only the result of poverty, it is also one of its major causes, experts say.
Adults with empty stomachs do not have…