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…
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…
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…
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 …
มีแฟนอาร์ตใหม่มาให้เราได้ติดตามกันอีกครั้งครับ โดยในวันนี้เราจะได้เห็นผลงานที่จะจับเอา Lisa และ Ayaka มาสลับชุดใหม่ใส่กัน ซึ่งชุดใหม่ของทั้งคู่เพิ่งมาในอัปเดต 3.4 โดยชุดของ Lisa จะมีชื่อว่านามแห่งความภักดี ในขณะที่ชุดของ Ayaka จะมีชื่อว่าสารเมื่อยามดอกไม้ผลิบาน คำพูดจาก
กรุงเทพฯ, ประเทศไทย (วันที่ 8 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2567) – เน็ตมาร์เบิ้ล ผู้พัฒนาและผู้เผยแพร่เกมมือถือคุณภาพสูงชั้นนำ ได้ปล่อยอัปเดตใหม่สำหรับเกม Idle RPG อย่าง The Seven Deadly Sins: IDLE Adventure ! ผู้เล่นสามารถสัมผัสความเพลิดเพลินไปกับอัศวินใหม่, กิจกรรมใหม่ในเวลาจำกัด, และอัปเดตคอนเทนต์ใหม่ได้แล้ววันนี…
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…
Mark Weisenmiller
TAMPA, Florida, Nov 6 2006 (IPS) – When Texas death row inmate Michael Dewayne Johnson slit his throat with a homemade razor blade in the early morning hours of Oct. 19, he took a life that the state wanted to claim later that day.
In doing so, he called attention to the stress endured by more than 3,300 inmates sitting in U.S. prisons for years as they await execution.
Johnson woke up every day for 10 years knowing that someday in the future someone would inject a poisonous drug into his veins to avenge a crime that the 29-year-old claimed he did not commit.
Johnson was at least the seventh death row inmate known to take his life in Texas since that state reinstated executions in 1974. The Death Penalty Information Centre estimates 301 peopl…
Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Dec 1 2006 (IPS) – Deliberately putting human health before economic considerations, according to local experts, Cuba has launched full-tilt into the vaccine industry to compete on the international market with its products, some of which are unique.
Cuban scientists are devoting themselves to investigating therapeutic products against cancer, malaria and cholera, diseases that ravage the people of poor nations.
However, the first destination of every new pharmaceutical is the Cuban market and the national hospital network. Medical sources indicated that eight of the 13 vaccines included in the national immunisation programme are produced locally.
Half of our research projects deal with vaccines, which are financially unattractive to th…
Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON, Jan 19 2007 (IPS) – While some critics of the stumbling rehabilitation of Iraq s health care system focused on the failure to deliver basic infrastructure and supplies, others questioned the whole U.S. approach.
Unlike other poorer countries, which focused on mass health care using primary care practitioners, in the 1970s, Iraq had developed a Westernised system of sophisticated hospitals with advanced medical procedures, provided by specialist physicians and financed by oil revenues.
A July 2003 report by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation noted that prior to 1990, 97 percent of the urban dwellers and 71 percent of the rural population had access to free primary health care; just 2 percent of hospital beds were privately managed.