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…

NEW YORK, Mar 1 2010 (IPS) – Last fall, the push to reform healthcare in the United States was all but hijacked by one of the country s most passionate recurring cultural debates.
On Nov. 7, 2009, Congressmen Bart Stupak, a liberal Democrat, and Joseph Pitts, a conservative Republican, sponsored a stipulation in the healthcare reform bill that would severely limit federal funding for abortions in a reformed healthcare system.

If Barack Obama s comprehensive reform bill were passed, consumers would be able to buy discounted health insurance from an index of government-subsidised providers. But under the Stupak-Pitts amendment, an insurer could only be included on the index if its plans excluded abortions from its coverage.

The amendment passed, 240-194, and the debat…

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 4 2010 (IPS) – An innovative programme in Old Havana has given the hearing impaired greater access to the historical and cultural wealth of the restored historic city centre.

Sign on a wall in Old Havana. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

Havana Radio is a public interest station with a focus on historical and cultural themes, and the hearing impaired are a segment of the population who would visit us and walk along these streets, but remained excluded from our work of restoring our cultural heritage. That was why the Cultura entre las …

Gonzalo Ortiz

LATACUNGA, Ecuador, May 4 2010 (IPS) – Seventeen-year-old Miriam Toaquiza is the only occupant of the teenage mothers ward in the public hospital in this Andean city. Beside her in the bed is Jennifer, her newborn baby.

Miriam Toaquiza and baby Jennifer in hospital at Latacunga, Ecuador. Credit: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

She is relaxed and smiling, in spite of having to stay in hospital longer than expected because of a postpartum complication.

Are they looking after…

Paul Stracansky

PRAGUE, Jun 16 2010 (IPS) – Senior medical figures in Eastern Europe have issued stark warnings that the region s healthcare sector is both unstable and unsustainable as health workers continue to leave in droves for jobs abroad.
They say thousands are leaving their jobs in their home countries because of poor wages and working conditions.

And some doctors admit privately that the situation is so bad that patients lives are already being endangered by staff shortages.

Unless more money is put into healthcare sector there will be a serious deterioration in patient care in the future, they say.

Dr Zdenek Mrozek, vice-president of the Czech Medical Chamber, told IPS: If nothing is done to improve the situation either in the short term or t…

Bonnie Allen

ZWEDRU, Liberia, Jul 14 2010 (IPS) – Henry Teh gently slides down a blue hospital sheet to expose the bare belly of a pregnant woman. As he pokes around to feel the position of the foetus, the midwife-in-training knows he is breaking tradition and changing the face of obstetric care in Liberia.

Many Liberian women are uncomfortable with being …

Claire Ngozo

LILONGWE, Aug 6 2010 (IPS) – Dowa, central Malawi: medical staff struggle to vaccinate frightened children clinging to their parents, as an armed policeman stands guard.
Police earlier rounded up the families from Chitanje village and marched them to the Chankhungu clinic a few kilometres away. The parents refuse to help the medical officers with the frightened children, who are screaming and thrashing about resisting the injection.

More than 52,000 people have caught measles in Malawi since January according to the country s director of preventive health services, Storn Kabuluzi. Up to 166 have died.

Measles had been suppressed across Southern Africa in recent years thanks to vaccination campaigns. UNICEF reports a worrying increase in cases in …

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Sep 3 2010 (IPS) – Mavi Susel, the first transsexual in Cuba to undergo sex reassignment surgery, back in 1988, has found herself trapped in the traditionally assigned gender role of a housewife.

Mavi Susel Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

She is a woman imprisoned in that gender role, Marilyn Solaya, the Cuban filmmaker who made the documentary En el cuerpo equivocado (In the Wrong Body), told the press.

The film, which premiered in mid-August in Cuba, was produced with the support of the second edition of DOCTV Latinoamérica, the first regional programme to f…