Miriam Gathigah
BUSAN, Dec 1 2011 (IPS) – Billions of people are marking yet another World AIDS Day this one themed Getting to Zero , for zero AIDS-related deaths, zero new infections, and zero stigma and discrimination.
But in Africa, what may be needed is zero tolerance for corruption so that funds required to fight HIV/AIDS and create awareness around the virus do not get siphoned away.
In East Africa alone, Uganda has had its main source of HIV funding suspended. Kenya has, on several occasions, come close to a similar fate due to evidence of massive misappropriation of HIV funding, says John Peter Kaguruzi, a public policy analyst in Rwanda.
In Djibouti, of the 5.3 million dollars given as an anti-HIV grant, 750,000 dollars were spent on expenditure tha…
KARACHI, Jan 29 2012 (IPS) – It was a dark and dingy room, where an elderly woman asked me to take off my panties, made me sit on a low wooden stool with my legs parted and then did something…I screamed out in pain, recalls Alefia Mustansir, 40, of her childhood experience.
A Bohra woman in traditional costume. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS
Her friend, Sakina Haider, remembers putting up a good fight before she succumbed. I was told by my grandmother that I was being taken to the doctor to address burning in the genital area when soap went there…
Beena Sarwar
BOSTON, U.S., Mar 8 2012 (IPS) – When the Oscar-nominated film Saving Face won an Academy Award in Hollywood for Best Documentary (Short Subject), it was the triumph of several firsts : the first time ever that a Pakistani filmmaker had won an Oscar; Pakistan s first Oscar winner was a woman; and it was the first time that an American and a Pakistani had co-directed an Oscar-winning film.
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 20 2012 (IPS) – Government and sanitation experts say Zimbabwe needs to increase efforts to promote good hygiene and invest in toilets and clean water provision, as the country grapples with a typhoid outbreak.
Zimbabwe’s challenge is to change people’s attitudes about sanitation and hygiene. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
The country has reported more than 3,000 cases of typhoid since March. Typhoid is transmitted by th…
Mangroves and seawall employed to defend local infrastructure against sea level rise and coastal erosion in Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea. Credit: Mama Graun Conservation Trust Fund
LAE, Papua New Guinea, May 22 2012 (IPS) – Sea level rise near Papua New Guinea, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) in the southwest Pacific, is estimated at seven millimetres per year, double the global annual average of 2.8-3.6 mm.
In a bottom-up approach to fighting climate change, the indigenous use of mangroves is now leading local and national plans to stem the destruction of land and communities by coastal flooding and erosion.
As global warming melts i…
A nurse attends to an expectant mother at Walgak Primary Health Care Centre in South Sudan’s Jonglei State. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS
JUBA, Jul 9 2012 (IPS) – One year after the formation of South Sudan, the country’s women say that independence has not resulted in the positive political, economic and social changes that they had hoped for.
Women activists worry that even after separation from Sudan on Jul. 9, 2011, when South Sudan became the world’s newest country and Africa’s 54th nation, the government has not done enough to improve .
But as people across the country celebrate the first anniversary of independence from Sudan, after a 21-year civ…
Girls at a rural school in Nicaragua. Credit: Oscar Navarrete/IPS
MANAGUA, Aug 22 2012 (IPS) – Carla lost everything when she got pregnant at the age of 13: her first year of secondary school, her family, her boyfriend, and her happiness. She spent a year panhandling on the streets of the Nicaraguan capital before she was taken in by a shelter for young mothers.
Her life fell apart in December 2006, when her mother discovered that she was three months pregnant as a result of being raped by one of her primary school teachers. Her mother gave her a savage beating with a belt and threw her out of the house, saying she couldn’t afford another mouth to feed.
Carla�…
Three in four people with mental illness live in developing countries, where treatment options are often limited or nonexistent. Credit: Photostock/IPS
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 10 2012 (IPS) – About 50 percent of Afghanis over 15 years of age suffer from mental health problems depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. In northern Uganda, nearly every family suffered during the vicious 20-year rebellion during which thousands of children were kidnapped and turned into child soldiers in the Lord s Resistance Army.
The fighting is over but the mental trauma continues.
Globally, close to 450 million people have mental health disorders, with more than 75 percent…
HIV/AIDS has caused a steady increase in the number of orphans in South Africa. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – After weathering the departure of its executive director amidst a misallocation scandal earlier this year, the world s largest funder of programmes to address HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is poised to announce a new leader Thursday.
The performance-based is a giant in the field of multilateral health financing, channeling 82 percent of the funds for TB, 50 percent for malaria, and 21 percent of the international financing against HIV/AIDS. To date, it has approved 30 billion dollars’ worth of spending.
“They n…
TASHKENT, Jan 2 2013 – Uzbekistan is facing a public health time bomb, experts are warning. Authorities contend they are making gains in the battle to contain the spread of HIV/AIDS, but independent specialists say such claims are built on twisted figures and deceptive methodology.
At a late-November speech to mark World AIDS Day, the director of Uzbekistan’s National AIDS Centre, Nurmat Atabekov, said Tashkent is making progress in its fight against HIV/AIDS and that the number of new infections in the country is falling, local media reported.
In 2011, Atabekov said, Uzbekistan saw an 11-percent decline in the number of new infections compared with the previous year; that followed a 5.5 percent decline in 2010. This year, the country should see another drop. The total…