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 …

DAKAR, Aug 2 2011 (IPS) – West African health experts are calling for governments to take the prevalence of hepatitis B and C more seriously, and to act to reduce the cost of treatment as part of more effective control of the disease.

Hepatitis vaccines are a key element in controlling the disease. Credit: Bios/Wikicommons

The hepatitis B virus is responsible for more than 80 percent of liver cancers in Africa, said the coordinator of Senegal s National Programme Against Hepatitis, Aminata…

Elizabeth Whitman

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2011 (IPS) – Each day, one thousand women die in childbirth and one million people become infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including 7,000 cases of HIV. Yet these numbers are preventable, experts insist, when countries possess the resources and willpower to address and deal with them.
Dignitaries and high-level officials gathered this week to discuss reproductive health commodity security (RHCS), or, simply put, ensuring that people have access to essentials of reproductive health including contraceptives and drugs for safer maternal health and childbirth.

Sponsored by the (UNFPA), the underscored the importance of reproductive and sexual health, especially in developing countries, to improve public health …

Fabíola Ortiz interviews Oswaldo Cruz Foundation public health specialist PAULO BUSS* – Tierramérica

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 25 2011 (IPS) – For Brazilian pediatrician and public health expert Paulo Buss, the worst enemy of health is unemployment. And if unemployment continues to rise, the result will be a global catastrophe , he told Tierramérica.

Health is the result of social equity, says Paulo Buss. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Buss, coordinator of international relations at the state-run (Fiocruz), be…

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 9 2011 (IPS) – Argentina s soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.

Studies show that people in rural areas in Argentina face risks from glyphosate spraying. Credit: Courtesy of Estudios y Proyectos

Research by the National University of Río Cuarto in the northwestern p…