William Fisher
NEW YORK, Sep 28 2010 (IPS) – Election-year interparty political wrangling is threatening to again sabotage congressional efforts to provide medical help for tens of thousands of firefighters and other first responders whose health was damaged by the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York s World Trade Centre.
As of June 2010, 836 of those who worked at Ground Zero have died and an estimated 70 percent of the more than 70,000 first responders have declared illnesses they say are related to the dust and other toxins present at the World Trade Centre site during and after the attacks.
This week, both the House of Representatives and the Senate are poised to introduce virtually identical versions of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act t…
Nasseem Ackburally
PORT-LOUIS, Oct 19 2010 (IPS) – The small island state of Mauritius is the only African country likely to meet all eight of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 at least on paper. But its citizens say government could do more to improve livelihoods, gender equality and environmental sustainability.
Mauritian schoolchildren. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS
Although Mauritius s 2009 MDG figures, released in September by the government;s Central Statistics Office, show it is pretty much on course to achieve all MDG …
Darío Montero
LA JOLLA, California, Nov 19 2010 (IPS) – On Dec. 15, we will make the great leap ahead when we present our health programme, our hospital boat, to the country, Caetano Scannavino announced in the name of a community project that has achieved one of its aims: to be included in the Brazilian government s social policies.
The Amazon jungle communities little by little took over the ini…
José Adán Silva
PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua, Jan 3 2011 (IPS) – Edgard Walters, who belongs to the Association of Disabled and Active Divers of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, has been in a wheelchair since 2003, when he made his last dive for lobster in the waters of the Caribbean.
Lobster fishermen in Puerto Cabezas. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS
It was not until he was paralysed from the waist down that the 32-year-old Miskito Indian found out that divers shouldn t make more than four dives a day, or go deeper than 18 metres. Only then di…
Mitch Moxley
BEIJING, Feb 20 2011 (IPS) – While new research indicates that China s overall suicide rate has been in decline for the last two decades, some segments of the population including urban males and the elderly are increasingly likely to take their own lives, the result of breakneck social change in the world s most populous country.
Just over a decade ago, the suicide rate among rural citizens was much higher than urban dwellers, and more women committed suicide than men, according to China s Ministry of Health, and reported in state media last year. Since then, however, there has been a 30 percent decrease in rural suicide rates, and more Chinese men are now reported to be taking their own lives than women. Precise figures have not been made available.
Sui…
Julio Godoy
PARIS, Mar 17 2011 (IPS) – Until the nuclear crisis started unfolding in Japan last week, most French citizens did not doubt that the country s 58 nuclear reactors were safe enough to continue operating for scores of years to come.
They ignored the evidence gathered by a handful of anti nuclear activists, who despite general public indifference, keep digging into the unfathomable intricacies of French energy bureaucracy to find out the truth about the frailty of the country s nuclear power plants.
But now, in the face of a looming nuclear catastrophe in Japan, even the most stoic French citizen would question whether this country is not living on the brink of a nuclear disaster.
Although no new representative opinion polls have been carried out sin…
WASHINGTON, Apr 14 2011 (IPS) – As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund convene for their annual Spring Meetings here, soaring food prices are high on the agenda, prompting some analysts to fast-forward to 2050 and the question of how to nourish the mid-century s estimated world population of 8.9 billion people – the majority of whom will live in developing countries.
About 35 percent of the world s grains go toward feeding livestock. Credit: ILRI/creative c…
Julio Godoy
BERLIN, May 18 2011 (IPS) – More than four years after the EU started negotiating a trade agreement with India, the process has been pushed to a stalemate by the EU s stubborn insistence in maintaining the so-called data exclusivity clause, despite fierce opposition by Indian government negotiators and Indian and EU non- governmental organisations (NGOs).
Protestors in New Delhi, India, demonstrating against …
KHAILAHUN, Sierra Leone, Jun 15 2011 (IPS) – Three-year-old David bolts up from his feverish stooper as a needle pricks his thumb, producing a tiny bead of blood. He looks down horrified but is too exhausted to cry and falls back into his mother s lap as the blood is wiped away
Juane K. Nabieu, a community health officer in the district s main Peripheral Health Unit. Credit: Meena Bhandari/IPS
Juane K. Nabieu, a community health officer i…
Wambi Michael
MBARARA, Uganda, Jun 28 2011 (IPS) – When the monthly contraceptive injection that Bernadette Asiimwe, a mother of four, got from government health centres in western Uganda was out of stock for weeks, she fell pregnant with her fifth child.
A nurse shows one of the mostly commonly used contraceptives. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS
By the time Assiimwe decided to pay for the contraceptive and went to Reproductive Health Uganda, a family planning association, she was already four weeks …