TRADE: WTO Biotech Ruling Reveals Special Interests, Say Critics

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 2006 (IPS) – A World Trade Organisation decision that called European safety bans on genetically modified food illegal under its global trade rules could usher in a new phase of potentially hazardous Frankenfoods worldwide and further erosion of local protections, say environmental and advocacy groups.
The groups urged the European Union to place human health and environmental safety first and continue to resist allowing imports of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The long-awaited landmark ruling on the EU s six-year embargo on genetically engineered crops could affect millions of farmers and consumers around the world and billions of dollars in trade.

The United States, the main plaintiff in the case, along with developing n…

ARGENTINA: Doctors Investigate Environmental Risks to Child Health

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 14 2006 (IPS) – How strong of a role do family habits play in the recurrence of bouts of asthma or diarrhea in children? Are repeated accidents in a school related to flawed building design? Are there links between learning disabilities and pollution?
To answer these and other questions, Argentina s Ministry of Health and the Environment and the city of Buenos Aires Secretariat of the Environment have begun setting up pediatric environmental health units (known here as UPAs), run by multidisciplinary teams specialising in child environmental health.

The first UPA is operating in the Pedro de Elizalde pediatric hospital in Buenos Aires, and teams have also begun working in three other hospitals in the capital and in several provinces. …

ENVIRONMENT-RIGHTS: Norwegian Prize for Argentine Activist

Marcela Valente* – Tierramérica

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 14 2006 (IPS) – The Argentine activist and lawyer Romina Picolotti won the 2006 Sophie Prize for demonstrating that human rights are intimately linked to the environment.
Since 1997 the Oslo-based Sophie Foundation has annually awarded this 100,000-dollar prize, established in honour of the book Sophie s World , by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder.

In 2004, the prize went to Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, who just months later won the Nobel Peace prize.

A lawyer with a master s degree in international law from the Washington DC-based American University, Picolotti, 35, headed the Latin American division of the International Human Rights Law Group in the 1990s. It was there that she began to realise that hum…

UGANDA: Abstinence Clashes With Reality When Women Are Powerless

Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura

KAMPALA, May 15 2006 (IPS) – Tens of thousands of Ugandan schoolchildren have enrolled in True Love Waits clubs that promote sexual abstinence as the way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Each student member has pledged commitment to God, myself, my family, my country, my friends, my future mate and my future children to be sexually pure until the day I give myself only to my marriage partner in a convenient marriage relationship.

The clubs, at schools in and around the Ugandan capital, Kampala, were launched by Family Life Network: a local faith-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that seeks to raise the moral fibre of Ugandan society through the family . Those who take the vow are issued abstinence commitment cards .

Executive dir…

HEALTH-NAMIBIA: Door to Door and Farm to Farm in the Battle Against Polio

Nhamoinesu Mseyamwa

WINDHOEK, Jun 18 2006 (IPS) – A national polio immunisation campaign is scheduled to take place in Namibia during the next few days this as the country grapples with its first outbreak of the disease in more than a decade.
Jack Vries, chairman of the National Health Emergency Management Committee, which is coordinating the Jun. 21-23 campaign, told IPS that officials faced a mammoth task in distributing vaccines to all of the state s 35 districts.

Namibia is the first country to attempt vaccination of all its residents, estimated at about two million, in ten years. The last state to run such a polio campaign was Albania, in 1996.

The United Nations Children s Fund is financing the immunisation drive, at a cost of 4.5 million U.S. dollars. T…

DRUGS-MEXICO: United States Behind on Its Homework

Adrián Reyes

MEXICO CITY, Aug 2 2006 (IPS) – As drug-related violence in Mexico spirals out of control and the drug cartels increase their pressure on the government, fingers are being pointed north at the United States, a key player in the global drugs trade.
Success in the war on drugs depends on the United States exercising tight control on the transfer of technologies and chemical precursors to countries where traditional and synthetic drugs are produced, and applying prevention strategies to its domestic consumption, Mexican Deputy Lucio Lastra Marín, of the governing National Action Party (PAN), told IPS.

So far this year, there have been more than a thousand killings linked to disputes between drug traffickers in this country. The Office of the Attorney Gener…

THAILAND: Pharma Majors Promise Cheap HIV/AIDS Drugs

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 6 2006 (IPS) – Suddenly, people living with HIV/AIDS in Thailand are finding hope for a longer life-institutions that stood in the way are now supportive of cheaper, anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs.
The latest change of heart towards Thais with AIDS comes from the United States pharmaceutical giant Gilead. It announced, last month, that it will sell its anti-AIDS drug Tenofovir 90 percent cheaper than the price this patent-protected drug is sold for in the U.S. and Europe.

The drug will be available at one US dollar per day. It is good for those who need first-line and second-line drugs, Paul Cawthorne of the global humanitarian agency Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders, or MSF), told IPS. Earlier, Thailand was not due to …

แฟนอาร์ตจับเอา Lisa และ Ayaka มาสลับชุดใหม่ใส่กัน

มีแฟนอาร์ตใหม่มาให้เราได้ติดตามกันอีกครั้งครับ โดยในวันนี้เราจะได้เห็นผลงานที่จะจับเอา Lisa และ Ayaka มาสลับชุดใหม่ใส่กัน ซึ่งชุดใหม่ของทั้งคู่เพิ่งมาในอัปเดต 3.4 โดยชุดของ Lisa จะมีชื่อว่านามแห่งความภักดี ในขณะที่ชุดของ Ayaka จะมีชื่อว่าสารเมื่อยามดอกไม้ผลิบาน คำพูดจาก

‘บอร์ซิน บาปแห่งความตะกละ เมอร์ลิน’ ปรากฏตัวสู่โลก The Seven Deadly Sins- IDLE Adventure แล้ว_1


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HEALTH-UGANDA: USAID’s Malaria Control Plan Risks Public Disapproval

Peter Wamboga-Mugirya* – IPS/IFEJ

KAMPALA, Sep 25 2006 (IPS) – A population explosion in the highlands in south-west Uganda has turned fertile wetlands into breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes.
Waves of migrant settlers have encroached on the wetlands to build makeshift homes and practice farming which is the main source of livelihood in these villages in Kabale district, on the border with Rwanda.

Wetland reclamation has contributed to changes in malaria epidemiology, observed the Ministry of Health. Official figures, which have not been updated for the last six years, revealed that 100,000 people had died from malaria in Kabale in 1999.

U.S. President George W. Bush s malaria control initiative launched in June 2005 in Angola, Tanzania and Uganda by the…