Kit Gillet

BEIJING, Apr 29 2010 (IPS) – China s lifting of its longstanding ban on foreign visitors with HIV removes a restriction that many Chinese doctors and activists find discriminatory, but erasing the stigma attached with the virus remains one of the biggest challenges ahead in facing the disease.
The lifting of the ban was announced on Apr. 27, one month after the country refused entry to Australian author Robert Dessaix, who had included his HIV- positive status on a visa application to China.

A statement released by the Chinese State Council on Tuesday said that, after careful research, government officials had concluded that the ban had an extremely limited effect on preventing and controlling the pandemic within the country. Officials also said that the ba…

BANGKOK, Jun 9 2010 (IPS) – She spends so much time immersed in water that she may soon turn into a mermaid. But Jariya Sakayaroj looks like she does not mind even if she ends up developing scales.

Microbiologist Jariya Sakayaroj explores the waters for fungi that may contain bioactive compounds that could be used for medical treatm…

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 9 2010 (IPS) – The Statute of Racial Equality, soon to be signed into law in Brazil, is at the centre of a controversy between those who consider it a historical achievement, like the abolition of slavery in 1888, and those who see it as failing to satisfy the demands of the black movement.
The ceremony at which Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will sign the statute into law, scheduled for Jul. 20, will not be the brilliant occasion hoped for by the government s Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR).

After nearly two decades of debate, the statute approved by Congress on Jun. 16 has not left everyone happy.

It is a watered-down text that does not include some of the major demands …

Susan Anyangu-Amu

NAIROBI, Aug 3 2010 (IPS) – An arrow points the way from a busy street along a rough pathway; visitors clutch their bags more closely. The door is open: sachets are displayed on the table with labels indicating treatment for ulcers, diabetes, hypertension, fibroids. But not the contraceptive pill IPS is looking for.
Thirty-five-year-old Sophie she didn t want her surname used came here for six months for a herbal contraceptive.

She says she gained a lot of weight and suffered severe bleeding in connection with the injectable contraceptive she was getting at a government health facility, so she turned to this alternative, oblivious to official warnings that it has been linked to serious health problems.

I stopped using conventional family pla…

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 27 2010 (IPS) – Experts from 13 Latin American countries called for a shift in counter-drug policies from a punitive to a public health-based approach for users, in order to reduce drug-related violence, on the argument that the current war on drugs has been lost in the region.
The Aug. 26-27 Second Latin American Conference on Drug Policy was organised in Rio de Janeiro by Intercambios Civil Association for the Study of and Assistance for Drug-Related Problems, of Argentina, and Psicotropicus of Brazil, two non-governmental organisations that advocate a new approach to global anti-drug policy.

The conference, which brought together public officials, academics and activists from around the region to debate drug policy, discussed …

Bonnie Allen and Clara K. Mallah*

MONROVIA, Sep 22 2010 (IPS) – Mercy Freeman sits on a small hospital cot in one of Liberia s emergency hospitals, looking down at her frail son, whose dark eye sockets have sunk into his bony face.

Nearly forty percent of Liberian children under five are malnourished. Credit: Bonnie Allen/IPS

He just started getting thin and thin[ner]. I do not know what is happening, that is why I brought him to the hospital, the 18-year-old single mother says, …

NEW YORK, Oct 15 2010 (IPS) – A U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent with mental disabilities is suing the U.S. government for wrongfully deporting him to Mexico and forcing him to endure over four months of living on the streets and in the shelters and prisons of Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.
Advocates say that the case, while extreme, is just one of many produced by the country s dysfunctional immigration system.

The suits were filed last week on behalf of U.S. citizen Mark Lyttle by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Georgia and the ACLU of North Carolina, in federal courts in those states.

Azadeh Shahshahani, director of the National Security/Immigrants Rights Project of the ACLU of Georgia, told IPS, Mark s case is a tragedy tha…

Ansel Herz

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 15 2010 (IPS) – People are going to take the body to MINUSTAH to show them what they did, Jean-Luc Surfin told IPS by phone as riots erupted against Haiti s U.N. peacekeeping force on Monday in the northern city of Cap-Haitien.

A demonstrator holds up an anti-U.N. poster during an October protest outside a MINUSTAH base in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Ansel Herz/IPS

Surfin, a…

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Dec 25 2010 (IPS) – Wikileaks cables have revealed a disturbing development in the African uranium mining industry: abysmal safety and security standards in the mines, nuclear research centres, and border customs are enabling international companies to exploit the mines and smuggle dangerous radioactive material across continents.
The Wikileaks cables reveal that U.S. diplomats posted in a number of African countries the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Niger, and Burundi, among others have had direct knowledge of the poor safety and security standards in these countries uranium and nuclear facilities.

The cables also highlight the involvement of European, Chinese, Indian, and South Korean companies in the illegal extraction and smuggli…

VIENNA, Feb 10 2011 (IPS) – Pakistan is still reeling from flooding that caused one of the world s costliest natural disasters in 2010, with millions of people lacking shelter, infrastructure in ruins and donations falling short of appeals. But worse may come.
The United Nations disaster coordination agency announced on Jan. 24 that the Pakistan floods caused damages of at least 9.5 billion dollars the world s third costliest natural disaster in 2010 and killed 1,985 people the fourth deadliest in a year of cataclysmic events.

But Pakistanis will face a water challenge of a different sort in the years ahead the possibility of dire scarcity.

There are so many other priorities that the government is facing, particularly at a national security level, and to be frank, …