Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Feb 20 2008 (IPS) – The future of a ban on smoking in public places in Germany is in doubt following a court order limiting application of any ban.
Germany became one of the last European countries to introduce a ban on smoking in public places at the start of this year. But the constitutional court of the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate ruled Feb. 12 that one-room bars would be exempt from the ban on the ground that it would drive their owners bankrupt.
The court decision is provisional, and the judges want proof whether this differential treatment can be justified.
The court allowed arguments lodged by five small pub owners of Koblenz city, some 460 kilometres southwest of Berlin, who said the ban on smoking would force them to clo…
Interview with Heather Wokusch, author and blogger
TAMPA, Florida, Mar 25 2008 (IPS) – In early March, the Pentagon s Force Protection Agency released a colourless, odorless gas in Crystal City, Maryland as part of a simulated terror attack intended to track air flows and test an array of chemical sensors.
Heather Wokusch Credit: heatherwokusch.com
Officials insisted that the gas dispersed in Operation Urban Shield was nontoxic , but not everyone is buying that claim.
The Pentagon does minimise the risks of these tests, Heather Wokusch, an investigative journalist and…
Aaron Glantz
SAN FRANCISCO, May 2 2008 (IPS) – Arturo Gonzalez delivered his closing arguments inside a packed courtroom on the 17th floor of the Federal Building in downtown San Francisco.
A partner at the gigantic corporate law firm Morrison and Forrester, he s part of a team of lawyers seeking to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide better health care and more timely disability benefits to returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
The case, officially known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake, represents the first class action lawsuit brought on behalf of the 1.7 million U.S. citizens who served in the war zones. Veterans say that over the last six years, the George W. Bush administration has systematically denied veterans the health care they …
Nergui Manalsuren
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2008 (IPS) – Despite the admirable progress made by some African countries in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS since 2000, 14 million Africans have died of AIDS in that time span, and an additional 17 million have been infected, says a new report on HIV/AIDS on the continent.
According to the report Securing Our Future launched Monday by the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa, the disease is reducing capacity in all social and economic sectors, undermining and slowing the overall development of the region.
It estimates that by 2020, the nine most severely hit sub-Saharan countries may lose 13-26 percent of their agricultural workers to AIDS people who are also household heads, mothers and fathers of young children,…
Bernarda Claure* – Tierramérica
LA PAZ, Jul 10 2008 (IPS) – Indigenous communities in Bolivia and Brazil have declared an emergency in response to the construction of the Madera River Hydroelectric Complex, which Brasilia is pursuing even as independent research efforts try to measure the impacts of what will be one of South America s largest energy projects.
The town of Porto Velho on the Madeira River. Credit: Agencia Brasil
The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this year has proposed construction of the Jirau and San Anto…
PESHAWAR, Aug 6 2008 (IPS) – The polio eradication campaign has ground to a halt in the Swat Valley, in northern Pakistan, with the breakdown of a peace agreement with a hardline militant group.
TTP s Maulvi Omar (left) insists there is no ban on polio immunisation. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
In fact, violence has escalated in recent weeks in the entire North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), except the Peshawar Valley, and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) with the Pa…
Heike Barkawitz
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2008 (IPS) – As world leaders gather at the United Nations to discuss progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Presidents Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Tarja Halonen of Finland, and Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of Tanzania are calling for more attention to be paid to maternal and child health.
In too many countries of Africa women s ability to survive childbirth remains a matter of chance, Kikwete stressed at a special event Thursday on the sidelines of the General Assembly.
Improving maternal and child health embodied in MDG four (to reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate) and five (to reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio, and to achie…
Cherrie Heywood
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov 18 2008 (IPS) – Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel s complete closure of Gaza s borders for the last two weeks.
A baby in Shifa hospital in Gaza struggles against illness and lack of medicines and electricity. Credit…
Zahira Kharsany
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 15 2009 (IPS) – A new UNICEF report reveals there is still much to be done to reduce infant and maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Failure to improve care for pregnant women and newborns threatens to undermine progress on all health-related development goals.
Newborn deaths account for up to 40 percent of all under-five deaths around the world, UNICEF Chief of Health Peter Salama told IPS in Johannesburg.
With 9.2 million deaths across the world, half of them are in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 40 percent are of newborn infants in the first 28 days of life. We now know that without addressing the issue of newborn care, we can t actually achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals.
UNICEF s State of the World s…
Stanley Kwenda
HARARE, Mar 2 2009 (IPS) – Zimbabwe’s crumbling health system makes it almost impossible to detect and treat tuberculosis (TB), doctors say. As a result, they suspect the country has large numbers of unidentified cases of multi-drug resistant (MDR) as well as extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB.
International humanitarian relief organisation, Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF), said Zimbabwe has the public health system of a country at war.
HIV and TB
Someone in the world is newly infected with tuberculosis (TB) bacilli every second; overall, one-third of the world’s population is currently infected with the TB bacillus.
TB is spread through the air when infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they propel TB germs, known as bacilli…