ECUADOR: Fewer Mothers Dying Thanks to “Model” Law

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

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…

EAST EUROPE: Healthcare Ails as Doctors, Nurses Emigrate

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…

LIBERIA: Men in Testing New Role as Midwives

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 attended by male midwives. Can this resistance be overcome? What are the alternatives? Credit: Bonnie Allen/IPS

Many Liberian women are uncomfortable with being …

MALAWI: Vaccination Foiled by Divine Intervention

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 …

FILM-CUBA: “I Fought for This, But Not Just to Be a Housewife”

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

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…

U.S.: 9/11 Rescue Workers Still Waiting for Healthcare

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…

MAURITIUS: Social Ills Prevail Despite Meeting MDGs

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

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 …

LATIN AMERICA: Community Projects Want to Graduate to Public Policy

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 initiative, Scannavino told IPS. Credit: Courtesy of Milton Bellintani/ECLAC

The Amazon jungle communities little by little took over the ini…

NICARAGUA: Lobster Divers in Deep Trouble

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

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…

CHINA: Men Becoming More Suicide-Prone

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…